The Improvement Era

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ORGAN OF
MUTUA

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Vol. XIII JANUARY, 1910 No. 3

Published Monthly at Salt Lake City by the General Board
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"I Desire to State that I have very much enjoyed the reading matter of the Era. which
has come so regularly. I have just read the first number of the new volume. Sure, and its
'champion,' as they say here." — Stayner Richards, Gateshead, England, November 23, 1909.

H. R Merrill, writing from Belfast, Ireland, says: "I have been deeply interested in
the articles and editorials of the Era since I have been here in Ireland doing missionary work.
The paper is a great power for good among the elders We get many useful articles and
doctrines from it besides the many excellent travel sketches and stories which all teach some
good lesson. I trust that our people may be brought to appreciate its value more fully."

A Description of the Deseret Gymnasium, an account of Manti City and her recent
semi-centennial, and other matter, were crowded out of this number, and will appear in Feb-
ruary.

Two Errors crept into the last number of the Era. Lillian Connelly should have been
credited with having drawn the artistic sketches that accompanied Lydia Alder's poem.

Then the third verse of the poem entitled "God's Victory," by William J. Kohlberg,
should have read:

When we can give the slighted

More aid than sympathy,
And then heal wounds unsighted —
Is that not victory?

IMPROVEMENT ERA, JANUARY, 1910.

Joseph F. Smith, ) pj:tors Heber J. Grant, Business Manager

Edward H. Anderson, } * Moroni Snow, Assistant

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Belief in God Rev. J. R. Dummelow, M. D. 193

Battle Hymn. A Poem C.E.R. Tain 202

The Crown of Individuality. III. — At the Turn of

the Road. (With Portrait) William George Jordan 203

Keep Groping. APoem.. William J. Kohlberg 213

The "Golden Bible" S. A. Kenner 214

Mother's Love Aubray Parker 219

The Little Peach: A Poem Eugene Field 220

The Rock Foundation of the Church A. Adolph Ramseyer 221

The Dream of Wealth. APoem Theo. E. Curtis 224

New Zealand — the Missionary's Wonderland. (Illus-
trated) E. P. Pectol 225

Slander George D.Kirby. 229

Extract From "The Old Journey." (Illustrated).. Alfred Lambourne 232

Hebrew Idioms and Analogies in the Book of Mor-
mon. II Thomas W. Brookbank 234

Thrift, Thrift, Horatio 239

The Purpose of Education : J.P.May 240

Salvation Universal. Ill Joseph F. Smith, Jr 244

Rapid Transit 251

Dan Hudson's Sacrifice. (A Story) AtteRa 252

The Higher View. A Poem Orson F. Whitney 266

Some Men Who Have Done Things. III.— Evan

Stephens. (With Portrait) John Henry Evans..-.. 268

Editor's Table:— A Mother's Love— If Thy Broth-
er Offend Thee Prest. Joseph F. Smith 276

Messages from the Missions 283

Priesthood Quorums' Table 285

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Vol. XIII. JANUARY, 1910. No 3.

Belief in God.*

BY REV. J. R. DUMMELOW, M. A.

[The following article is published by permission of the MacMillan
Company, Publishers, No. 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York. It is taken
from A Commentary on the Holy Bible, by various writers, edited by the
Rev. J. R. Dummelow, M. A., Queen's College, Cambridge. The article,
"Belief in God," is a number of times quoted by the editor and compiler
of the Seventy's Year Book for 1910, Elder B. H. Roberts, who recom-
mends the above named work to the Seventies as one of the best one-
volume and up-to-date commentaries published. He was anxious that
the following article should appear in full in the Era, and upon applica-
tion being made to the above named publishers, who hold the copyright
to the work, permission was given, and the valuable article accordingly
is presented to our readers. — Editors.]

The central subject of the Bible is God. The book opens
with an account of his creation of the heavens and the earth
(Gen. 1:1), and concludes with a description of the new heavens
and earth (Rev. 21) — the ideal to which creation is moving, and
wherein God himself shall be the immediate source of illumination
and the object of worship.

Throughout the Bible God is referred to as almighty, all-

* Copyright by the MacMillan Co., New York, 1908, 1909.

194 • IMPROVEMENT ERA.

wise, and all-holy, the eternal creator, sustainer, and moral governor
of the universe. He is represented as entering into special rela-
tions with his highest creature, man, who is created in his image,
after his likeness (Gen. 1: 26, 27), to be his vicegerent upon earth
(Gen. 1: 26-28), and to increase in sympathy and fellowship with
himself. Man has, however, abused his highest gift of free-will,
and so introduced sin into the world, a blot upon the fair creation,
and a hereditary taint upon his own stock. Henceforth God's
relation to man is changed. The glad love of pure beneficence
becomes the wistful love of redemptive purpose. And in due time
is chosen out for specially intimate relations with God, a single
tribe — the "seed of Abraham." Israel is "elected," i. e., chosen
out for special privilege and guidance, not from any motives of
favoritism, but in order that he may be the vehicle of blessing to
all mankind. To Israel — and through Israel to all men — is given
an even deeper and clearer revelation of the character and will of
God — that revelation which we see running through all the Old
Testament, and reaching its climax in Jesus Christ (cp. Heb. 1: 1-
5f). Different misconceptions are successfully purged away as
opportunity occurs. At Sinai any lingering taint of idolatry and
crude anthropomorphism is purged by the revelation of the ten
commandments, and the natural tendency to irreverent, easy-
going approach to the Almighty is met by the elaborate system of
strict ceremonial. The prophets of the eighth century B. C.
point out the futility of ceremonial reformation apart from
righteousness of character, and go far towards removing the still
prevailing misconceptions by which the Lord was regarded as the
tribal God of Israel, pledged to protect and support them, irre-
spective of their deserts. The Lord is "exalted in judgment"
(Isaiah 5: 16), and no respecter of persons. Special closeness
involves special responsibility (Amos 3: 2). Side by side with
this comes a universalizing tendency, a growing realization of the
one God's equal rule and care of all mankind (Amos 9:7; Isaiah 2:
2, 3; 19: 18-25), which finds strong emphasis in some of the later
Psalms (cp. e. g. Ps. 96, 100, 117), and in the book of Jonah.

Meanwhile the discipline of perplexity, which had its effect

upon the Hebrew people throughout their history, but most

arkedly during the Babylonian exile, purified and spiritualized

BELIEF IN GOD. 195

the conception of the meaning of religion and of life; carried for-
ward the thoughts of the faithful more and more wistfully to a
future life, in which righteousness should be vindicated and the
balance of happiness redressed; and while it brought home to them
the weakness and impurity of human nature, intensified the desire
for personal holiness and communion with God; and, finally, gave
occasion for the portrayal of the "Suffering Servant of the Lord"
(Isaiah 41-53) gathering up into himself at once human penitence
and divine redemption — that most wonderful figure in all the Old
Testament, which is strikingly typical of the central figure of the
New Testament.

The statements about God in holy scripture are uttered with an
air of authority, dogmatically; not as the result of a long chain of
reasoning: "The Lord said" this — "did" that — or more
emphatically, in the form of a message, "Thus saith the Lord."
The teaching of the Bible is not the result of deductive or induc-
tive reasoning. No direct arguments are adduced to prove the
existence of God— that is assumed throughout. His attributes
may be the subject of argument; his existence, never. His just-
ice, his wisdom, his power may be momentarily obscured by the
mystery of evil in the world — as in the book of Job. Incidentally
we may get arguments dealing with the nature of the Deity, as
e. g. the interesting a fortiori argument from creature to Creator
in Ps. 94, "He that made the eye, shall he not see?" etc., which,
logically carried out becomes an inference of Personality in God
from man's personality - there are arguments such as these
either stated or suggested in Holy Scripture, but the existence of
God never comes within their scope. It lies behind all else; it is
the fundamental conception in the light of which all else is viewed.
Not only in the Pentateuch and the Prophets and the Psalms, but
in the historical 'narratives — in the brief and apparently barren
records of the accession, regnal years, and death of the various
kings, it is made clear that God's hand is at work throughout
guiding the course of events, and that he is the ever-present
Judge by whom the actions of king and subject alike are weighed .
Even in the book of Esther, in which the divine name never once
occurs, no doubt is left upon the mind as to the providential over-
ruling of events both great and small. Nay, in those books

196 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

which are least formally theological — Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesi-
astes, the work of the "wise men," the humanists or philosophers
of Israel — the thought of God is present from first to last. They
do not grope and search after him like the great pagan thinkers.
They set out, not to discover, but to recognize him; to learn from
his dealing with nature and human nature more about that divine
personality who is the primary presupposition of all their sys-
tem, and with whom their heart holds sacred communion even
while the intellect stands baffled before the insoluble problems
involved in his permission of evil in the world he rules.

The Bible, as we have said, does not offer arguments to prove
the existence of the Deity, but it offers something which is far
more valuable to most of us than any abstract proof. It gives us
a concrete, experimental, descriptive theology. It shows us a pic-
ture of the world with God at work in it, which the devout, appre-
ciative soul instinctively recognizes as true. It offers us, largely
in the concrete form of narrative and history, a theory of the uni-
verse which, rightly understood, is found to meet the demands of
hearts and minds alike: revealing a God whose character is such
and whose relation to man is such that in him both our needs
and our aspirations find satisfaction. At the same time it inci-
dentally provides a theory of human nature (see especially Gen.
1-3) that affords the only satisfactory key to the raison d'etre of
those needs and aspirations — the explanation of man's actual
littleness and his potential greatness.

We will consider first the message of the Bible to man's heart,
and then its message to his understanding.

The needs and aspirations of heart and spirit can only be
satisfied by personal communion with the Deity, such as the
Psalter so wonderfully delineates, (see especially Ps. 16, 17, 63, 73,)
a communion which attains its fullest expression in the religion
of the New Testament.

This heart-knowledge is after all, to each individual who has
it, the most direct form of evidence for the existence of God — the
personal intercourse with him of our personal spirit — the communion
in virtue of which we can say, "I know that there is a God because
I know him. I experience in prayer and sacrament and meditation
a conviction of his reality and his presence which is quite as real to

BELIEF IN GOD. 197

me as is the conviction that those things exist which I can touch and
see. This conviction is clearest and strongest when I am at my
best, and I attribute all that is best and highest in my character
to such communion, as thousands have done before me."

This is the kind of "knowledge of God" that cries aloud to
us from the Psalms and Prophecies, and underlies the other writings
of the Old Testament. And the perfection of this communion is to
be found in Jesus Christ, as portrayed for us in the Synoptic Gos-
pels (Luke 10: 22; cp. Mark 13: 22), but especially in St. John
(5: 19f. 10: 15, 30; 14: 11, etc.), and reaches its climax in the
great high priestly prayer of John 17. After our Lord's ascension
and the descent of the Holy Spirit, it takes the form, for Christ's
members, of a fellowship with the blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost (II Cor. 13: 14; cp. I John 1: 3).

Being, however, in one sense, a purely personal and individual
matter, this sense of communion is commonly thought to be too
subjective to be adduced as an argument for the existence of God.
It is always open to an objector to say, "You assert that you have
this feeling; I am willing to admit your sincerity, but you may be
the victim of illusion. All I can say is that I have no such feeling
myself." To such an assertion it seems perhaps inadequate to
reply, "If you will but assume first provisionally (as we have to
assume many things in practical life) that existence which you can-
not demonstrate, and then act upon the assumption, conviction will
come with experience." Yet such a reply may be enforced and
corroborated with all the weight of more than nineteen centuries
of personal experience. Generation after generation of martyrs
and Saints have testified in the strongest possible manner to their
conviction that "God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently
seek him" (Heb. 11: 6), and have been ready to seal the convic-
tion with their life's blood.

That such evidence is not without scientific value, is very
strongly argued by no less a scientist than the late G. J. Romanes,
who speaks of those who would ignore it as untrue to the principles
of an impartial agnosticism. Still it fails to appeal to a large
class of enquirers, who look for a more definitely intellectual proof
and one less intimately associated with personal feeling and
emotion.

198 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

There are such arguments for the being and character of God,
and some of them have come down to us from very ancient times.
It may be admitted that they do not — either singly or even in
combination —amount to demonstrative proof; yet they form, as
we shall see, a very strong presumption in favor of belief in just
such a God as the Bible claims to reveal.

We will now briefly sketch the more important of these types
of argument, and then we may be better able to estimate the
extent to which the Biblical revelation corresponds to, and com-
pletes, man's intellectual search after God. We must remember,
however, at the outset that these traditional arguments are not
the originating cause of man's belief, even where belief is found
outside the influence of revelation, rather, they represent an intel-
lectual analysis or justification of a belief already existing. As
far back as Cicero in the first century B. C., or even earlier, pagan
thinkers had observed that religion in some form or other is a
universal trait in human nature. And though in modern days
apparent exception of "atheistical tribes" have been adduced to
prove the contrary, the trend of anthropological science may be
said on the whole to support the judgment of antiquity. There
may indeed be savages (though the point has not been proved)
among whom no definite trace of religious observance can be dis-
cerned; but are they normal representatives even of undeveloped
humanity? Is there no such thing as degradation? And have not
even these poor savages some vestige at least of the religious
faculty? For that is all our argument really requires. The world-
wide progress of Christian missions to the heathen seems to testify
quite triumphantly that no race or tribe of men, however de-
graded and apparently atheistic, lacks that spark of religious
capacity which may be fanned and fed into a mighty flame.

Granted, then, that the religious faculty is practically uni-
versal among mankind, what is the significance of this fact? From
ancient times it has been regarded as an argument— often
(wrongly) as a proof— that God exists. It is called the argu-
ment "from the general consent of mankind" in Latin, argumen-
tum e consensu gentium. The whole world, it is urged, must
surely be right— securus judical orbister rarum.

Of a truth it is exceedingly unlikely, if (as we must presume)

BELIEF IN GOD. 199

the world is rational, that a phenomenon so universal as religion,
so intimately and intricately interwoven with the central facts of
human life and progress, should be founded on illusion. But the
outward expression of the religious principle in different ages and
climes exhibits so much variety, inconsistency, and vagueness, that
we ought not perhaps to speak of this argument (at least in this
its broader and vaguer form) as directly evidencing the existence and
character of God. What it really amounts to is, as has been well said,
"an evidence that there are evidences." If the religious instinct is
observed to be practically universal, it will be worth while to see
whether it is not essential to human nature. And this quest leads
us to the formal arguments for God's existence. The grounds of
this religious instinct will be found to lie partly in man's relation
to the external world, partly in the constitution of human nature
itself.

The consideration of the external world around him, even
in its broadest aspect, leads man up to the thought of an Eternal
Cause; the study of its phenomena in detail with its marvoleus
intricacy of harmonious intersection produces the impression of
design, and leads to the thought of a Designer — i. e, of an Eternal
Cause that is intelligent and free. Reflection on his own con-
sciousness and the fact that the external world corresponds in a
mysterious way to his own thought leads to the idea of primal
and Universal Consciousness embracing all reality and forming, as
it were, a meeting place between Thought and Things. Lastly his
own moral nature-conscience, with its authoritative voice, clear-
ly distinguishable from mere wish, taste, desire, and self-interest
— speaks to him of a Universal Lawgiver, supreme and perfect, to
whom alone the "categorical imperative" of the inner monitor can
be adequately referred. The Eternal Cause is thus found to be
endowed with all the attributes characteristic of personality as
seen in man.

Of the first of these arguments little further need be said.
Man finds in himself a principle of causality in the light of which
he interprets the external world. He cannot help regarding the
succession of phenomena which he observes as effects — attributing
each to some cause. When he examines that again he discovers
it to be no true or absolute cause, but itself the effect of some-

200 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

thing further back, and so on. He finds in himself the nearest
approach to vera causa: yet he would recognize the absurdity of
calling himself self -caused. And the mind cannot rest in an end-
less chain of cause-effects. There must be, it feels, if you go far
enough back, a real Cause, akin, in someway, to man's own power
of origination, yet transcending it — a cause that owns no cause —
no source of being — but itself. And to this Eternal Cause all
things, including man himself, must be ultimately referable.

The third argument, again, in favor of a Universal Conscious-
ness, which has several different forms, is too abstruse for the
ordinary reader, requiring for its appreciation some degree of
metaphysical training. The second and the fourth — the "Design"
and "Conscience" arguments — demand a somewhat fuller treat-
ment here, being specially important in view of the light thrown
on them by recent scientific theory.

The Design-argument is perhaps the most ancient and the
most popular of all. It is never actually formulated in the Bible,
for the Bible, as we have seen, never treats God's existence as
the subject of argument. But its basis, the marvelous harmony
of the created world, is the theme of more than one of the Psalms
(cp. e. g. Ps. 19, 104, 147, 148); and St. Paul comes very near
to stating the argument in so many words, when he says (Rom. 1:
20) in depreciation of pagan superstitions and immorality, that
the "everlasting power and divinity" of the Creator are clearly
discernible from his works.

Granted that the very existence of the world implies an
Eternal Cause, what can we learn about that Cause? The nearest
thing to a true first Cause of which I have experience, is my own
personality: hence there is a presumption that the world's first
Cause will be at least what we know as personal. But that pre-
sumption is not all we have to go upon. There are definite indi-
cations in nature, when more closely observed, that make it im-
possible to regard the Eternal Cause as a merely mechanical
originator of the world process, that stamp it — or rather him — as
intelligent and free, a nature like my own rational nature, only
far above and beyond it.

Everywhere in nature we see the teleological principle (as it
is called) at work, i. e. we see means adapted to ends, and the

BELIEF IN GOD. 201

present subordinated to the future. This adaptation of means to
ends manifests itself in a bewilderingly complex way — in each
individual member of the great organism, in the lesser and greater
groups, and in the whole. Everywhere, in fact, I see traces of
purpose and design — for such adaptation speaks to me irresistibly
of these. My only direct experience of like phenomena is my own
personality, and so I am led to infer a Designer.

Some, however, have thought that this inference is invali-
dated by a closer scrutiny of those means by which the evolution
of physical organisms is effected, according to modern scientific
theory. Evolution, they say, has upset the Design-argument
altogether. The marvelously adjusted interaction of forces and
interests which we observe in nature is not, as we have hitherto
supposed, a perfect piece of elaborate machinery fresh from the
Designer's hand. It has a history behind it, and a history which
we have only just begun to trace aright. The present state of
things is not the result of a serene and orderly procession wherein
ervey member has found its due and rightful place. On the con-
trary, it is the result in every department of a struggle for exist-
ence fierce and unintermitted, in which only a small portion — "the
fittest" — have survived. Nature's waste products, far outweighing
her successes — how do they affect the Design-argument?

Again, we can see in part the actual -means by which this
relative progress in evolution has been made. On the one hand,
that is the principle of Variation, whereby the offspring always
varies in some degree from the parent, and, on the other hand,
that of Natural Selection, which results in the survival of the
type best fitted to survive. Where, then, is there room for
Design and a Designer? The answer seems to be that the origin
or root-principle of evolution has not yet been disclosed. What
is it that produces the Variation which Natural Selection fixes and
makes the basis of an upward step? The choice seems to lie
between God and — chance. That chance, or some non-rational
force, could work on such definitely "teleological" lines, could
produce such ordered and systematic results, is a theory harder to
believe than the theistic theory. And the difficulty of it is rather
enhanced than otherwise by recent scientific discovery. For if a
mechanically regular world in which neither failure nor waste

202

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

products had place, would produce the impression of design and
purpose, much more forcibly are we driven to the same conclusion
when we see order growing out of chaos, peace out of strife, and
apparently intractable material moulded to artistic perfection.
The background of struggle, pain, decay and seeming waste may
be in itself difficult to account for; but the result shows that
behind the working of the principles of Variation and Natural
Selection there must be intelligence, will, purpose.

The Design-argument may have been stated in the past, in
such a way as to expose it to the criticism of scientists; but the
argument itself — especially when broadly and generally treated —
has only gained strength and illumination from the modern view
of nature's working methods; for "Evolution," as Asa Gray said
to Darwin, "has brought back teleology to science."

[TO BE CONCLUDED IN FEBRUARY NUMBER]

Battle Hymn.

(For the Improvement Era.)

God save Columbia free,
Bright home of liberty,
Guard her high destiny,

Hedge it with peace.
But, should an alien host
Dare sully Freedom's coast,
Let war then meet their boast

With full surcease.

Let, then, grim battle roar,
Bathing our steel in gore,
Hurling swift vengeance o'er

Glory's red field;
Sharp be our eagle's claws
Striking in Freedom's cause,
Fearless of foes, because

Right is our shield.

Col. Diaz, Mexico.

Let then each bosom be
Bulwark of liberty,
Owning its majesty,

Guarding its fame.
Dealing on land or waves,
Death to the tyrant slaves,
Heaping their ready graves

High with their shame.

God grant Columbia fair,
Brave sons to do and dare,
Daughters that virtue wear

As a bright crown.
0 may they ever be,
Worthy of liberty,
Worthy of victory,

And wide renown.

C. E. R. Tain.

Ruins of the Casas Grandes Region,
Chihuahua, Mexico.

BY ELIZABETH R. CANNON.

The old town of Casas Grandes (big houses) was built three
hundred years ago on the ruins of the Aztecs. Whether you pass
through there in the full glare of the noonday sun, when the
Mexicans loaf in the plaza and the old priest sounds the church
bell by striking it with a hammer, or at night when the adobe
walls cast weird shadows in the moonlight, you cannot help

ON THE SITE OF CASAS GRANDES.

Beneath the tumbledown huts where the peons still live lies the
sleeping city of Casas Grandes, sacred to the dead, and its gold.

204

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

feeling the influence of the sleeping dead beneath the city.

The dead sleep peacefully, for the Mexicans defend them
against enterprising American archaeologists, claiming that they
hold the graves of their ancestors sacred. Perhaps a better reason
is that they believe there are vast quantities of gold hidden
there, and some day, .manana, (tomorrow) they will themselves
dig it up.

Casas Grandes was the main city of this region, and it was
surrounded by smaller villages which probably served as outposts

THE GREAT OLLA.

The great olla is twelve feet high, the interior lined with rope,
the inhabitants of Cave Valley stored their maize.

In it

for protection. One of these had a well developed copper mine
where they obtained the precious metal for the heads of arrows and
spears. The villages are now, in appearance, nothing but grass-
covered mounds.

Some terrible catastrophe came upon this country and
destroyed all the inhabitants and their homes in some mysterious
manner. Many are the conjectures as to whether the dread calam-
ity were earthquake, pestilence, famine or war, as bodies are found
unburied near the fireplaces and along the walls, as if the people
had lain down and died.

RUINS OF THE CASAS GRANDE S REGION.

20E

OLD RUINS AT CASAS GRANDES, MEXICO.

On digging into a mound one finds that it is composed of
many rooms — a village in one house. The walls have been white-
washed three or four times. Near the earthen fireplaces are

pieces of broken ollas
and cooking utensils.
On digging several
feet beneath the floor
one finds the graves
covered with charred
wood. They probab-
ly burned their wood
so it would last long-
er, and prevent odors
from coming into the
rooms of the living
from the decayed
bodies.

A skeleton's rank
is determined by the
number of ollas buried with it These ollas are the highly colored
pottery of the Indians, and after being buried several centuries
their decorations are still fresh and brilliant. Some bodies have
been surrounded by as many as nine, while others have only one
plain one at the head of the grave.

These vessels were most likely filled with food, so the spirit
would not get hungry on its long journey. The Indians probably
buried their dead under the floor only in time of siege, as there
are not enough bodies to prove that they made cemeteries of their
houses.

The wide facial angle of the skull of the Casas Grandian
shows a high order of intelligence. Their reservoirs, connected
with the city by canals three miles long, showed more engineering
skill than is exhibited by their lazy successors.

Not far from Casas Grandes stands the Mount of the King-
It well deserves the name, for it looms high above the surrounding
peaks. As our horse picks his way along the trail that leads to
the summit, where the wind is never still, we cannot help thinking
that this would make an ideal summer home for a king, who from

206

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

this exalted altitude could survey his vast domains. As we near
the summit we notice broad stone steps, above which are the ruins
of several lava rock buildings, circular in shape:

The summit of the peak is enclosed by a high wall built of
lava stone, and still higher is another inclosing a small, circular
building on the very top of the hill. On account of the protection
afforded this ruin it was thought to be a fort, but the smallness of
the place disproves this, for it could hold very few people. The

BURROS LOADED WITH WOOD -CAS AS GR ANDES, MEXICO.

Indians say there is a secret tunnel leading from here to the old
town, but it has never been found. A better theory is that this
was a temple built for the worship, high up among the clouds, of
the "Unknown God."

Down the side of the mountain leading into the earth towards
the temple is a passage that the settlers call a mine, although there
are no signs of ore. It was perhaps a secret passage leading to
the temple, or possibly was dug later in a fruitless search for hid-
den gold. There is a legend that one of the last Montezumas came

RUINS OF THE CASAS GRANDE S REGION.

207

The MountainLion — An Omnipresent
Beast, Mexico.

from Casas Grandes, and certain it is the cruel Spaniards
crushed the Aztecs only to find that most of their vast treasure
had mysteriously disappeared.

Very different from their advanced Casas Grandes neighbors

were the strange little dwell-
ers of the caves, who perched
their aeries on the highest
cliffs of the Sierra Madre
Mountains. They were little
better than the missing link.
Their small, dark habitations
were made by plastering sun-
dried adobes on the outer
wall of the natural limestone
caves. That they lived in
mortal terror of some deadly
enemy is evident from the
fact that they got in and out
of their dwellings by means
of rope ladders, crawling in and out of tiny holes, like rats. Their
implements, pottery, and fireplaces are of the rudest description.
Men who live in constant fear of death have no time to cultivate
the arts. Perhaps they were one of the tribes conquered by the
dominating Aztecs in their march to the south.

At the entrance to the main cave stands the great mud olla
twelve feet high and twelve feet in diameter, used for a granary,
for it still contains a few grains of corn. Not far from here are
the terraced gardens where the maize was grown. They are liter-
ally ''hand-made," for the Cave-dwellers carried every particle of
soil up from the valley below and plastered it on the cliffs, for they
dared not plant their crops on the fertile plains. No wonder an
eternal gloom envelops Cave, Valley!

Below, on the rocks, amidst tangled grape-vines and the poison
ivy, are the hieroglyphics— picture-stories of this strange people in
happier times before they were so close pressed by their implac-
able enemies. There are two persons holding hands, perhaps tell-
ing the story of a peace treaty or royal marriage. There is a
clumsy>nimal, "and'byfitXbear's paw, telling'the [tale of a great

208 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

hunt and perhaps some deed of bravery. Besides these are numer-
ous symbols unintelligible to us.

A better story than any of these rock carvings was told in
the caves themselves by a skeleton lying through a doorway, with
a stone hatchet cleaving its skull.

• A few years ago some hunters, while exploring the cavea,
came upon a false wall, which they promptly knocked in. They
beheld the mummified body of a woman seated upright on a stone
chair. The body, which was well preserved, was covered with
shreds of cotton cloth. At first the hunters thought that the
Indians, like the Egyptians, understood the art of embalming;
but the body had been preserved by the peculiar atmosphere of
the cave. Perhaps this was a hostage that the fierce little men
thus walled in alive. Perhaps she was a beloved princess who, in
the last days of siege, was brought here that her body might not
fall into the hands of her enemies. Was she a barbarous Helen
of Troy that brought warfare and destruction in her wake? Who
can say? What a story those blackened lips might tell if they
could only speak!

Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Family Meeting.
(Selected.)

We are all here :

Father, mother,

Sister, brother,
All who hold each other dear,
Each chair is filled, we are all at home,
Tonight let no cold stranger come;
It is not often thus around
Our old familiar hearth we're found.
Bless, then, the meeting and the spot,
For once be every care forgot ;
Let gentle peace assert her power,
And kind affection rule the hour.

We're all — all here.

Charles Sprague.

The Crown of Individuality.

BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN.

III.— At the Turn of the Road.

In walking along a mountain road there is sometimes a
sudden, sharp turn where, by seeming magic, the narrow path is
transformed into the entrance of a vast panorama of Nature. We
seem stunned as we involuntarily stop short, rest and surrender to
its majesty. The view exalts us, glorifies us, inspires us. We
have a new, high, restful ground of contemplation. We have a
new test of values, a new base of interpretation, a new relation to
life.

The hamlets and villages in the valley bear a new, strange
dignity— they have become integral parts of a great picture. The
colors of trees and flowers blend from mere single effect into a
wondrous harmony. We are seeing the birth, life and death of a
river as an eagle might watch it from his nest on the crags. The
fields of a hundred farmers become one great farm. And far be-
yond, we can see the great ocean — whitening the shore with its
billows leagues away.

The complex has become simple; the absolute has now become
relative; the isolated has become associated; the trifling great,
and the great greater; the detail losing none of its individuality
has an added value like a jewel set in a crown. There is a finer
sense of justice in our judgment, the ozone of the higher levels
seems tonic to our soul, a sweet peace fills our heart.

As we look backward tlfe narrow path, doled out to us in

* From The Crown of Individuality. Copyright, 1909, by Fleming
H. Re veil Company.

WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN,

Author of "Self-Control; its Kingship and Majesty," "The Crown
of Individuality," etc.

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 211

installments as our weary feet toiled up the long ascent, now
stands out clear— for its entire length. We begin to see it as a
type of our whole life, as the angels must view it with greater
charity from the higher wisdom of their truer perspective. Rest,
retrospection, reflection, realization, and revelation are giving us
a fine new view-point, a new chance to get our moral bearings, to
tune our life to bring out its highest, purest notes— at the turn of
the road.

Humanity tends to take narrow views of life and its prob-
lems instead of occasional great, broad sweeps. It is nearsighted-
ness of the soul that permits the unworthy to throw the really big
things into the shadow. We hold some trifle of care or worry
close to our vision as a jeweler with an awning over his eye peers
into a watch. We let one sorrow be the grave of many joys, one
ingratitude smother many of our kindnesses struggling for expres-
sion, one weakness within us sap the strength from many virtues.
We need the' bracing inspiration, the revealing illumination of the
larger vision. The turn of the road, in its highest sense, is not a
place to stay— we have to fight the battle of life. It is only an
arsenal of supply — not a battlefield of action.

The beginning of the new year is a natural, sharp turn in the
road of time. Here we may wisely rest awhile, and in the peace
and quiet and calm of self-communion see the long stretch of the
road of a single twelvemonth. It is built imperishably of short
steps of living — from moment to moment.

Many of the purposes for which we labored and struggled in
our narrow, close, selfish absorption, seem poor, petty and puny
when seen from the turn of the road. The structure of some
effort we thought marble, now is shown in its sickening sham as a
hasty affair of show and pretense, made of staff that could not
stand the wear and tear and test of time. It was not built on
square lines of character, of the best that was in us. It lacked
strength, sincerity, simplicity. The material was made up of policy
and selfishness put together on hurried plans. It was a failure; it
cannot be rebuilt, but it is worth only a passing regret and a real-
ization of the lesson of its non-success— at the turn of the road.

We now see how many times the paralyzing hand of procrasti-
nation touched the good deeds we meant to do, the roseate dreams

212 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

we longed to transform into actualities. We wished to do, and we
wanted to do, but we did not will to do. The fault was not in
conditions but in — us. We were not equal to opportunities. It
is a false philosophy that teaches that opportunity calls only once
at any man's house. It comes with the persistency of an importu-
nate creditor, always in a new guise, and clamors for admission,
but we may be — too busy to answer the bell.

Habits that we had determined to master, to bring into sweet
harmony with our highest self, may still stalk large and insolent
before us. They may seem to taunt us that they are stronger than
we. They were never made in a day and cannot be mastered in a
day. An hour may begin the making of a habit; an hour may be-
gin its breaking. Time, with heart and mind united in determin-
ation, can conquer any evil habit or create and confirm any good
one.

The look backward from the turn of the road should inspire
us by making vivid to us how much of what we feared never came
to pass. The tyranny of worry, that dominated us and held us
for months trembling slaves to a weak fear, that dissipated our
energy, dulled our thinking, and darkened our mental vision, at
the very hours that should have given us fullest control of our
best, is now seen as an enemy to true individual growth. It
means a harder fight in the unending battle against worry and
grief.

The broader view of life reveals that the only great
things in life are trifles; that what pained us most, saddened our
hearts, and turned our hopes to ashes were only trifles — cumulat-
ing into overwhelming importance. A cruel word, an unkindness,
a little misunderstanding may darken a day and separate us from
one we love, or may petrify us into a mood of doubt and despair.
The most joyous moments of life, the high lights in the pictures
of memory, may, too, be only trifles of kindness, fine expressions
of love, simple tributes of confidence and trust that make the
heart smile — as we remember.

Knowing the right is useless unless— we practice it. Realiz-
ing our weakness is profitless unless — we seek to change. We
may even grow so comfortably reconciled to faults and failings
as to accept them as finalities, to confess them and even boast

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 213

about them. It is unjust to ourselves and unjust to others. Some
people treat their faults as though they were flaws in the Portland
vase of a noble nature, and as if — pointing them out were practi-
cally banishing them forever.

Nature is constantly giving us new — turns of the road. It
may be a birthday or some general anniversary in the cycle of the
year. It may be some red-letter day in the private calendar of
our emotions, or some date eloquent to us as telling of some joyous
"first'' or some pathetic "last" time in the sacred diary of the
heart. It may be a supreme sorrow, an agonizing sense of loss,
the coming of a great joy, the closing of some epoch in our lives,
the proving of the actuality of something too awful for us even to
have feared, some exultant half -hour that changes irrevocably all
our living. These and numberless other days, hours or single
moments, may bring us alone to — the turn of the road.

Then may come one of those rare moments of life, of fine
spiritual discernment, of luminous revelation, of coming to one's
highest self, when the sordid, the mean, the temporary, the selfish
are stripped in an instant of their garish shams and tinsel. Then
the real, the true, the eternal stand out in their majesty, bathed
in the splendor and glow of the revealing of truth. In such a
spirit the very tingle of the inspiration of the infinite fills us. We
seem born again to new, better and greater things, for we have
seen the divine vision — at the turn of the road.

(The next article in this series, "Facing the Mistakes of Life," will
appear in the February Era.)

Keep Groping.

{For the Improvement Era.)

A dreamer in thought's vastness cries:
"Alight! alight! for my blind eyes,
Bring forth a light— God hear my sighs
Before my soul in darkness dies!"

A voice then answers mild and low:
"Be still, my child, and you shall know —
Great light doth from great efforts flow,
Keep groping, and thy soul shall glow!"
Salt Lake City, Utah. William J. Kohlberg.

The "Golden Bible."

BY S. A. KENNER.

To the making of books there is no end. I don't know who
wrote this originally, nor does it matter. It is strikingly true, and
the truthfulness of it must occasionally appeal to those who have
handled books all their lives, as well as to those who only look at
them now and then.

The writer of these lines has done some little reading of a
rather diversified character; and while by no means among those
who are properly classed as well read, and while no doubt behind
many in the scope and magnitude of reading, he has still, for in-
stance, done enough in the line indicated to know that Pilgrim's
Progress and Innocents Abroad are not by the same author, nor
even by contemporaneous authors; also that Baxter's Saints' Rest
is not a humorous production, nor much of anything else that is
interesting. All this is thrown in to let the reader know that with
all the reading that can be done, going, or trying to go, through the
great mass of lex scriptce produced by the human family, or any
considerable part of it, is too much like trying to fix the limit of
the stars in the firmament or the number of people who have ap-
peared upon the earth since Adam and Eve went into and out of
the Garden of Eden. The effort would be futile, the time spent
upon it worse than wasted.

Finding myself in the reading department of an old-time
friend I noticed a little red book on the table, and on picking it up
found it to be entitled The Golden Bible. The name, but not the
volume, had previously been seen and some surprise was expressed
thereat, which was increased upon receiving the information that
it had been extant for several years and had been quite extensively
read. It was by Rev. M. T. Lamb, and dealt exclusively with the
Book of Mormon. It was looked over as carefully and extensively

THE "GOLDEN BIBLE." 215

as time and circumstances would permit. In his preface the
author avers, with apparent earnestness, that he sets about his
task devoid of rancor or prejudice, but with a due regard for the
performance of a conscientious duty. He then sails in and says
things, quoting copiously from and commenting freely upon the
contents of the said book, his quotations, however, being carefully
selected, wrenched from the contexts, and discussed as though
standing alone and having little or no connection with antecedent
or succeeding subject matter. You could play the deuce with
almost any book in that way, even with the Holy Bible, to which
loving reference is frequently made by the author of the Golden
one, in endeavoring to show the contrast between the former and
the Book of Mormon. The alleged bad grammar, illogical deduc-
tion and pointless assertion, which he seeks to 'make plain as char-
acteristic of the latter volume, and treats with ridicule, or what
to his mind doubtless does duty as such, are not only invidiously
presented but in places disingenuously so. Referring to the inci-
dent of Lehi, for example, going in quest of game and obtaining
which he returned to camp, the auriferous volume asks what he
would naturally do, having obtained the object of his hunt, but
return to camp. Sure enough! But where is the point? Would
it have made the story more acceptable had the hunter returned
empty-handed, or succeeding in his quest have gone off somewhere
else with the game? The author seems to regard this incident as too
trivial to be worthy of mention; but if so, what does it become by
repetition? If the ancient scriptorian had such poor judgment in
the matter of compiling sentences as to permit one to be borne into
the record here and there that had no special importance per se,
what excuse has the modern writer whose attack is ostensibly
aimed at the whole fabric to which such sentences relate, for pick-
ing them out and devoting considerable space to them? There is
much else in the same connection that he wholly misses. Why?
Because they are not so easily disposed of? Whether so or not,
he justifies one in believing that such is the case, and "one" at
least does so believe. Of like tenor and effect are several more —
I might as well say most, and in fact all, that were perused of the
gentleman's slings and arrows; they incite to the antagonism
which is created and are ^distinctly reacting.

216 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Before proceeding further with this little review, let us give
Rev. Lamb the benefit of some of his own language:

The first objection to the book [of Mormon] to be considered is this:
It has no trace of God's hand upon it. No divine stamp. Everything is
human, very human. * When he [God] paints a flower

or tints the rainbow He does not daub. Look at the

discourses of our Lord, any one of them.

And then the inspired writer of the Golden Bible proceeds at
length to draw a sharp contrast between the language of the Bible
and that of the Book of Mormon, showing that the latter is in-
sufferably verbose, reiterative, turgid and pointless, the other
book, of course, being the opposite in these respects. He makes
numerous citations from the former and then rewrites them in
fewer words and, according to modern methods, in less faulty dic-
tion. Any of us could do that, and we don't have to confine our-
selves to the Mormon book either; the Bible itself as well as any
ancient or even mediaeval, and some few of the modern standard
productions, may be so treated. Let us try a sample or two, this
taken without selection from the Bible:

12. And Jehosaphat waxed great exceedingly; and he built in Judah
castles and cities of stone. 13. And he had much business in the cities
of Judah; and the men of war, mighty men of valor, were in Jerusalem.
14. And these are the numbers of them, according to the house of their
fathers: Of Judah, the captain of thousands; Adnah, the chief, and with
him mighty men of valor, three hundred thousand. 15. And next to
him was Jehohanan, the captain, and with him two hundred and four-
score thousand. 16. And next him was Amasiah, the son of Zichri,
and with him two hundred thousand mighty men of
valor. 17. And of Benjamin; Eliada, a mighty man of valor, and with
him armed men with bow and shield, two hundred thousand. 18. And
next him was Jehozabad and with him a hundred and fourscore thousand
ready prepared for the war.— II Chronicles, 17.

Abridged to the Lambsonian standard, these might be stated
thus: *

Jehosaphat became wealthy and built castles and storehouses, his
traffic extending to Jewish cities. A great army was in Jerusalem, there

* The reader will please observe that in this there is no disposition
to make light of or in any manner revise the scriptural text, only a de-
sire to show the inadequacy and injustice of Rev. Lamb's methods.

THE "GOLDEN BIBLE." 217

being — Of Judean generals: Adnah, in command, with 300,000 brave
men; Jehohanan, with 280,000; Amasiah, the son of Zichri, with 200,000
splendid troops. Of Benjamin, there was Eliada, a valorous leader, with
200,000, armed with bows and shields; and Jehozabad with 180,000, all
ready for business.

Here is a selection taken at random from Shakespeare:
They say this town is full of cozenage;
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye;
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind;
Soul-killing witches that deform the body;
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks.
And many such like liberties of sin :
If it prove so I will be gone the sooner.
I'll to the Centaur to seek this slave.
I greatly fear my money is not safe.

Comedy of Errors, Act 1, Scene 2.

Why blank verse to detail so prosaic a circumstance? The mod-
ern reportorial method,. with its incidental slang — which Rev. Lamb
uses quite freely — applied to the quotation would simplify it thus:

It is reported this town is full of cheating. Thimble-riggers, hypno-
tists, even impossible witches, bunco-steerers, sure-thing men and others
of like ilk, are said to haunt the place. So I'll take good advice and hike
before my money is gone.

This "translation" may seem a little strained and far-fetched
to the reader; but it is not a whit more so than are many of the
"reductions" from the text of the Book of Mormon made by Mr.
Lamb. There is not space enough at my disposal to give any of
them — the briefest being somewhat lengthy — so, for once, wall the
reader kindly receive the unprejudiced judgment and carefully
considered word of this writer for it?

As to the quotations from the "Golden" author, which had
sequence been observed herein would have received consideration
before the immediately preceding matter, there is a good deal that
might be said and some little that will be. The first objection to
the Book of Mormon is that it has not the trace of God's hand
upon it, according to the "Golden" critic. The extreme arrogance
of this, so apparent to even the casual observer, will become more
striking the more it is considered, and here the "divine" becomes

218 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

a victim of his own favorite practice of comparison. The Book of
Mormon puts forth the claim that those who really want to know
regarding its divine authenticity may be gratified by other means
than the solemn and unforced statements of sane and living wit-
nesses as to the origin of the book; but Mr. Lamb, rushing in
where angels would fear to, or at least do not, tread, announces
without reserve that God's hand is not there! How does he know?
Has the Deity ever shown him his hand? By what right does he
assume so much familiarity with the Great Author as to be able
to know where His hand is, regarding any mortal production, and
where it is not? Mr. Lamb is estopped from saying that he
was inspired or that it was revealed to him, because he especially
repudiates divine inspiration and denies that there is such a thing
as modern revelation from on high; so that the question put by
the New York World to the Tammany leaders, "where did you get
it?" is clearly applicable. The only refuge the gentleman can
have is that he is convinced of it, that it is a fixed conviction de-
rived from a thorough consideration of the subject in all its bear-
ings, and in the light of educated human understanding. But the
refuge so cheerfully and voluntarily herein extended, is by no
means a strengthening, but works a complete abandonment, of his
position; because, as will be observed, he makes an unqualified
statement, an absolute assertion of correctness, and any modifica-
tion thereof is so much in the direction of a retreat. It is a fact
too apparent to permit of controversy that he knows nothing what-
ever about it — that the impress of the Almighty might or might
not be upon every line of the Book of Mormon, and so far as actual
knowledge is concerned Mr. Lamb would be as ignorant of the
situation as a Senegambian. Now, of course, we are not always
able to prove to a demonstration things that impress us so strongly
as to amount to a conviction, and so long as we state the case that
way we are on the safe side; but when we cut loose from all res-
traint and say without reservation that things are thus and so and
not otherwise, we ought to be prepared with better evidence than
Rev. Lamb possesses regarding his bald, blatant assertion in rela-
tion to the hand of the Almighty — no, not better evidence, but just
evidence, for he has given none and manifestly has none to give.

[to be concluded in next number]
Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Mother's Love.

BY AUBRAY PARKER.

Who can guess the greatness of a mother's love? The depths
of it no one can plumb. The young mother is conscious of a
strange stir in her heart which makes it pulse with gladness. It
is the birth of the mother-love; and that love is as lasting as life:
it is eternal.

If, in the course of a mother's life, one of her loved ones is
laid at rest, and she has to leave it there in the little churchyard,
no matter how far from that place she may wander, even to earth's
farthest point, that little mound which marks the resting-place of
her dear one will prove an unfailing magnet to draw her heart to
that spot; because the tendrils of that life departed are still
wound rouud her mother heart, and are vital bonds.

How powerful is a mother's love! Many a young man has
held in his heart the knowledge of his mother's love, and it
has been that and that alone, which has kept his feet in the path
of right.

Mothers are the makers of the world's heroes.

We are often discovering new genius and greatness in un-
thought of circles. But it is not new genius or new greatness
that we find, but obscure greatness and genius which is not new
because it is just found out. Greatness has been the cherished
ambition of many a mother's heart, not for herself, but for her
children. A mother, when on her way from England to America,
was asked her reason for going, and she answered, "To raise gov-
ernors for them." She prophesied truly, for three of her sons
were indeed governors.

When Napoleon was exiled in St. Helena he declared: "My

220 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

mother loves me. She is capable of selling everything for me,
even to her last article of clothing." Do you marvel that he
attained greatness with such a mother's love behind him?

The greatness of a nation lies in the goodness of its mothers;
for in the goodness of its mothers lies the greatness of its sons.
The greatest greatness is the greatness of love; and mother's love
is the greatest of human loves. It is sacrifical love. It is a phase
of that greater love displayed by the All-Father in the gift of his
Son as a vicarious sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary. Mothers have
been known to suffer for that which they have not been guilty,
in order to shield their sons from shame.

How great a word is mother! And the greatest of our
great men have not failed to do homage to it. They have added
their testimony to the sanctity of the union of mother and child.

In the two pure loves of child and mother,
Two human lives make one divine.

Gateshead, England.

The Little Peach.

{Selected.)

A little peach in the orchard grew —
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew

It grew.
One day, passing that orchard through,
That little peach dawned on the view
Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue—

Them two.
Up at that peach a club they threw —
Down from the stem on which it grew
Fell that peach of emerald hue.

Mon dieu!
John took a bite and Sue a chew,
And then the trouble began to brew —
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue,

Too true!
What of the peach of the emerald hue,
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew?
Oh, well, its mission on earth is through,

Adieu!

Eugene Field.

The Rock Foundation of the Church.

BY A. ADOLPH RAMSEYER.

But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered
and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And
I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build
my Church : and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

This passage, which is frequently quoted by our elders,
(Matt. 16: 15-19) in order to prove the necessity of revelation in
the Church, is full, I believe, of much wider significance. It is
indeed true that each one who repents and is baptized into the
Church of Christ receives by revelation a testimony of the divinity
of the work of the Lord. But this is not all: Peter being asked
his individual opinion of Jesus, answers, Thou art Christ, viz., the
Anointed, the Messiah. In antithesis to this testimony of Simon
Peter, Jesus proclaims Peter to be a rock (Petros, or Petra in Greek,
Cephas in Syriac, the mother tongue of our Lord and his disciples,
see John 1: 40) upon which Christ's Church was to be built; not
upon Peter alone, but upon Peter and the other eleven apostles, as
Paul says, when writing to the Ephesians: Ye are built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being
the chief corner stone" (2: 20). This promise of our Lord began
to be fulfiled on the day of Pentecost, when, through the preach-
ing of Peter and the eleven, three thousand souls were baptized
and added to the Church.

But the word rock has yet another meaning in connection

222 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

with Christ and his apostles. What are apostles and prophets if
not messengers sent of God with a message to their contempo-
raries? The prophets before Christ, the Lord himself, and his
apostles after him, being moved by the Holy Ghost (II Peter 1: 21)
spoke for the edification of the Church in all ages. Hence the
Savior's warning: "Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings
of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man,
which built his house upon a rock: . . . And every one that
heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened
unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sands, " with the
two well known results. The Book of Mormon, too, is likened to a
rock: "For, behold, saith the Lord, I will manifest myself with
thy [Nephi's] seed, that they shall write many things which I shall
minister unto them, which shall be plain and precious.
And in them shall be written my gospel, saith the Lamb, and my
rock, and my salvation" (Nephi 13: 35, 36). This passage is
corroborated also by the following one: "Behold, I give you a
commandment, that you rely upon the things which are written,
for in them are all things written concerning the foundation of my
Church, my gospel, and my rock; wherefore, if you shall build up
my Church upon the foundation of my gospel and my rock, the
gates of hell shall not prevail against you" (Doc. and Cov. Sec.
18: 3-5), and thus we get a lucid and beautiful explanation of the
much debated passage of Matthew.

Have the gates of hell prevailed against the Church of Christ?
What emotions were stirred up in our Savior's breast while speak-
ing these words, when, with prophetic eye, he foresaw his own
crucifixion, the persecution and martyrdom of his Saints by the
Jews, by the Romans, and finally by that most abominable church
"which slayeth the Saints of God, yea, and tortureth them, and
bindeth them down; and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and
bringeth them down into captivity" (I Nephi 13: 5). The gates of
hell did not prevail against him, nor against his Church, for he
broke asunder the gates of hell, visited and delivered the captives,
and afterwards ascended to heaven, and prepared a place in the
wilderness where his Church might flee and remain for a season to
come forth again in the last days (Rev. 12: 6-14).

To claim that Christ's Church remained in the world during

THE ROCK FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH. 223

the eighteen centuries which elapsed since the collection of books
forming the Bible was compiled would be to insult the wisdom and
the power of the Almighty. A single look at the babel of religious
systems ought to convince any sane mind that they do not enjoy
the Spirit of God; for "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance"
(Ephesians 5: 22, 23); while the works of the flesh (Ephesians 5:
19, 20, 21) "adultery, fornication, murders, revellings," etc,
abound, and have been abounding in the world during the last
eighteen centuries. But, though an apostasy from primitive
Christianity was plainly apparent, it must not be forgotten that the
rays of living light, which for a brief period emanated from the
Church of Christ, have accomplished wonderful results. Who
would exchange the condition of things in Europe or America dur-
ing the past two or three centuries, for the conditions that existed
when imperial Rome governed the world? Christianity has abol-
ished slavery, given the toiler one day of rest out of the seven,
provided places and opportunity for the soul to be lifted up to the
Creator in prayer and song of thanksgiving; hospitals were built
and endowed, schools established; philanthropists have taught the
masses to help themselves; rulers -have learned to respect the
rights of their subjects, their brethren in Christ; while the com-
mon man, by keeping the laws of God, has learned to rise above
the law of man, thus gaining an independence of thought and
nobility of character unknown to previous ages. The pages of
Holy Writ furnished exalted themes for poetry, music, sculpture
or painting, giving the humblest ones lofty ideals for the improve-
ment of morals; ideals which pagan philosophers never dreamed of.
These very things, being disseminated as the word of God among
our forefathers, have been "of great worth unto the Gentiles"
(I Nephi 13; 23) for their spiritual and social development; and
thus the word of the Lord, given to the world by his apostles
eighteen centuries ago, has been of inestimable value to mankind.
The great truths of Christianity are today believed and practiced,
not always properly, it is true, in every land and clime. The
divine birth of Christ, his miracles, his atoning death, and his
triumph over the grave, are implicitly believed by millions of hon-
est souls, and millions have been and are being benefited by his

224 IMPRO VEMENT ERA .

exemplary life and his gracious words. True, there are disagree-
ments about dogmas, and practices, yet those nations which have
come nearest to the ideals of Christianity have made -the most
wondrous achievements, notwithstanding the drawbacks of apos-
tasy. And if so much has been accomplished by the world in its
fallen state, what wonders cannot be expected when millions shall
have become members of the Church of Christ, which has now
returned from the wilderness?

Forest Dale, Utah.

The Dream of Wealth.

{For the Improvement Era.)

'Twas only a dream of a yesternight,

But a warning dream in the dawn of light:

I sat in the halls of fame, endowed

With a hand that ruled and a host that bowed.

My right hand grasped my wealth untold,

My left, my faith new-born, but old.

But my soul grew faint in that regal chair,

For the burden was greater than I could bear.

So I flung my faith at my feet, at length,

For my gold cried out for all my strength;

And the voice of greed rang loud in my ear,

With a tone of pride and a touch of fear:

"What would you do, if you lost your gold,

With its train of attendants manifold,

The pomp of power, the smile of fate,

The homage of penury and the state?"

But an answer came to that voice of greed:

' 'So many and many a noble deed

Not done; if the heart, a slave, were freed,

You could serve your God, a still voice saith.

But, oh, what would you do if you lost your faith?"

Theo. E. Curtis.
Salt Lake City, Utah.

New Zealand— the Missionary's Wonder-
land.

BY ELDER E. P. PECTOL.

The cut herewith shows all but two of the elders who were
laboring in the Wairarapa Conference last August.

ELDERS OF THE WAIRARAPA CONFERENCE, NEW ZEALAND.

Back row: W. C. Harper, J. A. Erickson, A. E. Anderson. Front
row: H. H. Crouch, E. P. Pectol, J. J. Godfrey.

I wish to briefly explain a few of the many good features of
New Zealand, showing it to be a field of labor to be desired by
earnest missionaries.

226 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

The Wairarapa is one of the beautiful valleys of New Zea-
land, situated in the southern part of the North Island, stretching
northward from Cook's Strait, a distance of sixty or seventy
miles, and contains many beautiful streams and woodland scenes,
and a lake on which countless numbers of ducks and swans may
be seen the whole year round. In width the valley proper is
about four miles, and is bounded on the west by the beautiful and
densely wooded Rimutaker range, whose noble forests lie majes-
tically mirrored in the calm lake at its foot, and on the east by the
low coast range. Attached to the valley and lake is this Maori
legend:

You will observe that the North Island is fish-like in appear-
ance. As the legend goes, while out fishing, Maui's hook became
fastened to some very large object. Being a very strong man,
he succeeded in bringing to the surface an immense fish— the
North Island, as we now have it. Wairarapa valley, situated in
the extreme southern part, between two mountain heads that fall
sheer into the ocean, and the lake, twenty miles long, is
directly connected with the sea from the fish's head and open
mouth, in which Maui's hook became fastened. Cape Kidnapper,
the southern point of Hawke's Bay, represents the hook Maui used
in bringing up New Zealand.

This is only one among the many beautiful valleys in New
Zealand. The mountain scenery, for its kind, cannot be surpassed
elsewhere. It has no eternal snow-clad peaks, like the Rockies or
Himalayas, nor has it an abundance of precipitous, rugged, glaring,
weird scenery, which is so fascinating to some; but it is that
beautiful, green, picturesque, wooded and vineclad scenery, en-
livened by the sounds of the laughing rills and the songs of birds,
that awes one into admiration; and that causes one to exclaim, with
a new inspiration, "Chance cannot be the author of such beauty!
It required a master mind, with a complete knowledge of the
forces of nature, to produce in reality this beauty that skilled
artists have only succeeded in feebly portraying upon canvas."
Do elders enjoy legends or scenery, there is no better place than
New Zealand to gratify their feelings.

In size, Wairarapa district is thirty-five miles wide and one
hundred miles long. To enhance its value, eight cities and many

NEW ZEALAND— THE MISSIONARY'S WONDERLAND. 227

small towns dot the land. In all, about thirty-five thousand Europeans,
and one thousand Maoris, find homes and shelter within these
boundaries, with but four elders to proclaim to them the gospel's
message. There are many such districts. You ask, what kind
of people? As good as in any land. People with souls to save.
All are God's people, and he values one soul not less than another.
Do elders have in their hearts, first and foremost, their missionary
work? There is no better field than New Zealand.

"But," says one, "I want to come in contact with the best in
the world, — the educated, the learned, the scientific. I prefer
England or Germany."

Let me say here: this government has a splendid educational
system of her own, and one can do well to study it. Does it
oppose your theoretical idea of an educational system? You, then,
are better off for having met its opposition. You may become an
originator, instead of an imitator. Do you wish to develop your
psychological study? Do you wish to become a leader and an organ-
izer? If so, no better oppor-
tunities offer elsewhere than
in New Zealand. Four na-
tive schools are now in ses-
sion, and one more is soon to
be established. Then, plans
for the building of a college
are being executed as fast as
possible. The New Zealand
Mission is coming to the
front. All we need is more
good elders.

We often hear at home
that the climate of New
Zealand is very unhealthful.
This is not so. It is true that
elders occasionally get sick
here, but is this not the case
in every mission field? 'Tis
true we are subject to very sudden changes, yet there are no
great extremes to fear. The temperature ranges betwee

The Writer in his Garden, with a few

of his Maori School Children

in the Background.

228

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

N*~;rt

m-i »»c. — -alt

proPv.

;i-''jj^5l

ute

B

> lb :

H

twenty degrees Fahrenheit in winter, to ninety degrees in
summer. Snow seldom falls except on the tops of the
mountains. I wish to say here that I am writing about the
North Island only; the South Island being subject to heavy snow-
falls and, naturally, a lower
temperature. While I think
due caution should be used
and the physical condition of
the elders well understood
before assigning them to
their fields of labor, yet I
believe the call is the main
thing to heed, and trust to
the One whose work we ara
doing. People affected with
asthma, bronchitis, consump-
tion and various other lung
and throat troubles, have
been greatly benefited here,
while others, not affected, have contracted these maladies.
Disease exists everywhere. Have faith in the work we go out to
perform; and remember the promises that Jesus made to his seven-
ties and apostles are in full force today.

New Zealand is noted for its dairy products. Large dairy
farms and milking sheds are seen on every hand, and our Saints are
not behind in this industry, one family milking one hundred and
twenty-five cows through the summer, and seventy-five in winter.

The above cut shows a group of milkers at one of the many
farms where our elders find a home, warm friends and loyal Saints.
The one who represents himself as foreman, takes a leading part
as general roust-about in the shed, among the pails, and at the
churn, and is one of our good "Mormon" boys.

If elders have hesitated, in deciding where they should like to
go, let them do so no longer. Swing the battle ax aloft and shout,
"New Zealand for me!"

Masterton, New Zealand.

Milking Force at the Taumata Sheds

Slander.

BY GEORGE D. KIRBY.

It has became a habit with me, when assigned a subject for
discussion, to go to my Bible for a text; so, on the subject of
"Gossip," I followed my usual course, and my surprise was great
when, looking through the "word-book," I failed to find any refer-
ence in the scriptures to the word "gossip." My next step,
then, was to look up the dictionary, and see what explanation
Mr. Webster attached to the word, and I found, "Gossip, a tale-
bearer. ' ' Not until then did it occur to me that a gossip was a
bearer of tales, a scandal-monger, or one addicted to slander. I
was not longer at a loss for a text, for the Good Book contains
many references to that word, "slander." I took the first I came
to: Exodus 23: 1, "Thou shalt not raise a false report; put not
thine hand with the wicked, to be an unrighteous witness."

The prevalence of this fault is amazing, when one stops to
think for a moment. Very few people, if any, are exempt from
it. Men are as great gossipers as women. There is nothing some
men like better than a scandal, and if this is not forthcoming,
they enjoy talking about other folk's affairs. Get a man at a
social gathering, and gossip will not be lacking for a minute. But
the men do not do it all. It is a deplorable fact that much of the
conversation indulged in by our women folks is in the nature of
criticism, sometimes of their very best friends. But it is not done
in a spirit of malice: it seems to be simply the universal method of
keeping up an interesting discussion. Since the days of Noah,
the way in which some people have talked about their neighbors
has made the more judicious grieve, and before the tower of Babel
was completed, no doubt the spice of conversation was that which

230 IMI'ROVE.UE.VT ERA.

related to the latest scandal. Threats have been made, laws
passed, and we read in our early history that scolds and gossips
were ducked in the river, in order to check the bearing of scandal,
but all to no avail. Like the poor, the gossip "is always with
us."

Now, it is a positive fact that no good comes of this habit.
The man, in whatever field he may be engaged, should always bear
in mind that it never pays to criticize any person unjustly. No
one helps himself by slurring another. Such conduct tends to
raise, in the mind of the listener, a question about the man who is
trying to depreciate another. The "hammer" is a weapon dan-
gerous to the man who uses it, as he is quite as likely to smash
his own fingers as to drive his purpose home.

It is a critical habit to drift into. When we come to judge
people, we must remember that we see so very little of what they
really are. Life does not consist of one intense joy, nor of one
great sorrow; it is the accumulation of the little things that con-
stitutes living, so do not be critical of the little faults, and, per
contra, be quick to find the little virtues and to praise them.

If a person's heart is impure, his life will be impure. Solomon
said, "As a man thinketh in himself, so he is;" and the same wise
man said, "Keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the
issues of life." Evil deeds spring from evil thoughts. A person
whose thoughts are pure, need not be afraid that his actions will
be impure; they cannot be, because, as Solomon said, "The issues
of life proceed from the heart." A man because he sees the defi.
ciencies of others, fancies himself to be enlightened when in reality
he is ignorant, because he has never stopped to reflect on his own
shortcomings.

"Be not deceived: God is not mocked; for whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap." If you expect a harvest of
joy, you must sow joy; if you expect hope, peace, love, the seeds
of these must be abundantly scattered.

In the eastern countries there is one great rule which guverns
all relations between man and man, a rule which is so simple as to
be within the reach of all; the disciple is bidden to never give pain
to another creature. We also are taught the same, but there are
so many demands made by our false personality, under the names

SLANDER. 231

of righteous indignation, proper pride, self-respect, just anger and
the various forms of criticism and judgment, that the pain we are
causing by our word is lost sight of.

Milton says: "Goodness thinks no ill, where no ill seems."
Never did any soul do good, but it became readier to do the same
again, with more enjoyment. Never was love or gratitude or
bounty practiced, but with increased joy, which made the practicer
still more in love with the fair act. We may scatter the seeds of
courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them
will fall on good ground and grow up into benevolence in the
minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the
bosom whence they spring. Once blest are all the virtues; twice
blest, sometimes.

If we enjoy the companionship of the Holy Ghost our disposi-
tion will be made better, our hearts will be filled with love for our
fellow creatures, we will become more charitably disposed, and harsh-
ness will disappear, because our hearts will be in a condition good
and lovely. The gospel will not only affect our minds and our
souls for good, but soften the harsh, rugged features, mellow the
feelings, and plant love in the heart where hate once dwelt, and
we will then become a delightsome people.

Sugar City, Idaho.

The Blessing of Them that Fear the Lord.

"Blessed is the soul of him that feareth the Lord: to whom doth he
look? and who is his strength? For the eyes of the Lord are upon
them that love him, he is their mighty protection and strong stay, a de-
fense from heat, and a cover from the sun at noon, a preservation from
stumbling, and a help from falling. He raiseth up the soul, and lighteneth
the eyes: he giveth health, life, and blessing." — Ecclesiasticus 34: 15-17.

EXTRACT FROM "THE OLD JOURNEY."

BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE,
Author of "Our Inland Sea," etc.

"Far in the West there lies a des°rt land, where the moun-
tains

Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous
summits."

Joyfully we burst into song. "All hail ye snow-
capped mountains" — there they were at last. O
what a time of gaiety followed, when the evening
meal was over, and the sweet-toned clarionet
assembled all in the open corral. The young men
and women, and the older ones, too, danced the
hours away, forgetful, in the merriment of the
time, of the fatigues that were past, and those
that were to come. It was such hours as these
that atoned for those which had been sad.

Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon
us as the number of miles ahead grew less and
less. Even those who had grown apathetic and
trudged silently along, or sat questionless in the
wagons, began to manifest the same eager inter-
est which had marked the day of our starting out.
Wake up! wake up! wake up! One who was
ever brimming over with fun and frolic beat
together two old tin pans, and roused all laggards
and stay-a-beds.

The Golden West, the Valley, was our goal!
Has not the dream of the Pioneer been realized?

TOWARD THE GOLDEN WEST.
From "a rough sketcbTby? Alfred Lambourne.

LARAMIE PEAK — FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE HEIGHTS.
From a rough sketch by Alfred Lambourne.

Hebrew Idioms and Analogies in the Book
of Mormon.

BY THOMAS W. BROOKBANK.

II.

These instances in which the principles of enallage have been
applied, are not the only ones that occur in the Book of Mormon,
and a few additional ones, without accompanying remarks, shall now
be given, in connection with certain Biblical texts, in order that
the correspondence of the two records upon the point in question
may be perceived at a glance :

BIBLE.

Ye shall not afflict any widow
or fatherless child. If thou afflict
them in any wise, and they cry at
all unto me, I will surely hear
their cry (Ex. 22: 22, 23.)

And it shall be if thou do at
all forget the Lord thy God, and
walk after other gods, and serve
them and worship them, I testify
against you this day, that ye shall
surely perish (Deut. 8: 19.)

Remember and forget not how
thou provokest the Lord thy God
to wrath in the wilderness: for
from the day that thou didst de-
part out of the land of Egypt,
until ye came into this place, ye
have been rebellious against the
Lord (Deut. 9:7).

And thou shalt write them
upon the door-posts of thine house,

BOOK OF MORMON.

We knew that ye could not
construct a ship, for we knew that
ye were lacking in judgment; where-
fore, thou canst not accomplish so
great a work (I NephilT: 19).

For the Lord had not hitherto
suffered that we should make much
fire, as we journeyed in the wilder-
ness; for he said, I will make thy
food become sweet, that ye cook
it not (INephi 17: 12).

And I said unto him, Belie v-
est thou the scriptures? And he
said, Yes. And I said unto him,
Then ye do not understand them
(Jacob 7: 10, 11),

Now Amulek said, 0 thou child
of hell, why tempt ye me. Know-
est thou that the righteous yieldeth
to no such temptation? (Alma
11: 23).

HEBREW ANALOGIES IN THE BOOK OF MORMON. 235

BIBLE. BOOK OF MORMOM.

and upon thy gates: that your days Now I would that ye should

may be multiplied, and the days of remember that what I say unto

your children (Deut. 11: 20, 21). thee, I say unto all (Alma 12: 5).

Notwithstanding thou mayst Behold my sons and my daugh-

kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, ters, who are the sons and daugh-

whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, ters of my second son, behold I

according to the blessings of the leave unto you the same blessing

Lord thy God which he hath given which I left unto the sons and

thee * * * only ye shall not daughters of Laman; wherefore

eat the blood; ye shall pour it upon thou shalt not utterly be destroyed;

the earth as water. Thou mayst but in the end thy seed shall be

not eat within thy gates, etc. saved (II Nephi 4: 9).
(Deut. 12: 15-17.)

These Hebraisms are thus demonstrated to be fully as charac-
teristic of the language of the Book of Mormon as they are of that
of the Bible, and some of the grammatical errors in the former,
to which our attention is sometimes called by our opponents, are
also found in the Bible, which is a model of correct English; and
they should not be regavded by any one as fit matters for ridicule,
but be viewed in their true light, as peculiarities necessarily asso-
ciated with the use of a Hebrew idiom, and hence as affording unim-
peachable evidence that the Book of Mormon was not written by
Joseph Smith, nor by any other man who was not thoroughly
familiar with some peculiar principles of the Jewish language.

If those who peruse these remarks will turn to Christ's ser-
mon on the mount, and read especially Matt. 5: 39; 6: 1, 2 and
6, 7, and 16, 17, and 7: 1-5, they will find that, if there is any
ground for charging illiteracy against the Book of Mormon writers
because of the peculiarities in the use of language just passed
upon, an identical charge of illiteracy can be sustained against the
writers of the Bible.

Remarks relative to the Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon
will be closed, for the present, with a few observations respecting
the use of we in the text where Nephi says, " We are a descendant
of Joseph'' (I Nephi 6: 2). Writers of these times frequently use
we instead of the singular /, as it seems to savor less of egotism,
and Nephi 's substitution of we for / in the cited text, suggests to

286 IMPROVEMENT ERA,

some minds grounds for the charge of modernism against his writ-
ings; but his language is fully sustained as proper by examples
already produced, where a plural form is used for the singular to
imply that the person or thing contains within himself or itself
what is to be divided amongst many. In this case, Nephi could
not alone claim the honor of being a descendant of Joseph, for his
illustrious descent was necessarily shared with all the other mem-
bers of his family. Thus this alleged mistake, or error, on the
part of Nephi is, when rightly viewed, simply another evidence of
the authenticity of his writings.

Passing now to another phase of our general subject, it
becomes necessary to quote again some recognized authority as
the foundation for our remarks. Turning, therefore, once again
to Greene's Hebrew Grammar, paragraph 69, we learn that the
' 'formation of words and their inflections are accomplished partly
by internal changes and partly by external additions. * * *
The external additions are significant syllables welded to the root
or to the word, either at the beginning or the end.'' This state-
ment of the principles upon which Jewish words are built up,
shall be supplemented with a part of paragraph 181, as follows:
"All nouns are, with respect to their formation, reducable to cer-
tain leading types or classes of words, each having a primary and
proper import of its own. The derivation of nouns, as of the
verbal species, from their respective roots and themes, calls into
requisition all the expedients, whether of internal or of external
changes, known to the language.''

A general exhibit, illustrating the application of some of
these principles in the formation of many of the Nephite proper
names, is to be submitted; but before presenting it, there is one
Nephite name that deserves special consideration, together with
the meaning given to it in the Book of Mormon. The one thus
singled out is Rabbanah (Alma 18: 13)).

The termination in ah is a very common one among Jewish
proper names, and almost invariably carries with it the idea of
some kind of relationship to Jehov-ah. For example: Abij-ah,means
him to whom Jehov-ah is a father. Azari-ah signifies helped of
the Lord, and Hezeki-ah, strength of the Lord. Further the
meaning of the Hebrew name Rabbi is, generally, "teacher ''' but

HEBREW ANALOGIES IN THE BOOK OF MORMON. 237

it also has the meaning of "master," or Lord, as we readily gather
from the context of Matt. 23: 7, 8. A few relative remarks from
the able pen of Dr. Adam Clarke in his notes on the text just
cited now follow, and the special attention of our readers is
requested to the points that he presents for our consideration. He
says: "There are three words used among the Jews as titles of
dignity, which they apply to their doctors — Rabh, Rabbi and Rab-
ban, each of these has its particular meaning: Rabban implies
much more than Rabbi, and Rabbi much more than Rabh.
They may be regarded as three degrees of comparison: Rabh great,
Rabbi greater, and Rabban greatest." Now it is evident, from all
the facts which bear upon this matter, that Rabban-ah must have
some meaning that is associated with the highest of earthly dig-
nities on one hand, and with the power, wisdom, or other attri-
butes of Jehovah on the other, — with those of Him who is King of
all kings. The Book of Mormon, therefore, in giving to the name
Rabban-ah the meaning of "powerful or great king," is correct to
the last degree. From the context of Alma 18: 13, where the
name occurs, we learn that Lamoni, a Lamanitish king, and his
people did not think the appellation beneath the dignity of the
Great Spirit, whom they imagined they saw in their presence
clothed upon with a body of flesh and bones. Not only is the
meaning of this word correctly interpreted by the Book of Mormon
writer, but it is built up upon unquestioned principles for the form-
ation of names in the Hebrew. No mistake of any character has
been made. It is derived from the proper root. The proper
modification of that root is selected in order that its whole force —
all the force and meaning that it was capable of being made to
express— might appear in the new name, and, finally, the proper
termination is added to associate it with the Almighty, or the
Great Spirit, as he was known to the Lamanites.

The evidence which other Nephite names afford in favor of
the Jewish origin of the Book of Mormon is very valuable; and
some of the characteristics, by which they are distinguished as
Hebraic, shall now be made apparent by means of the promised
exhibit, which is of a comparative nature, showing at a glance the
correspondence that exists between many Biblical names and others
that are of Nephite formation. By means of this exhibit, our

288

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

readers will also get a view of the prefixes and suffixes, and other
modifications that have been applied or effected in the formation
of these Nephite names, which have been constructed according to
the principles last quoted from Greene's Hebrew Grammar:

BIBLE.

BOOK OF MORMON

BIBLE.

BOOK OF MORMON

Abinad-ab

f Abinad-i
( Abinad-om

f Gid

I Gid-don-ah

Abish-ag

Abish

Gid-eon

{ Gid-ianhi

Gosh-en

A-gosh

I Gid-gid-doni

Eish
Riblah

f A-kish

\ Eish-cumen

( Ripla-kish

I Am-gid

f Mori-ancumer

Mori-ah

\ Mori-anton

Aminad-ab

Aminod-i

( Mori-antum

Gola-n

An-gola

Zer-ah

Zer-ah-emn-ah

Car-chemish

Chemish

Gaz-ara

Gaz-elem

Math-u-sala

\ Math-on-i

Hesh-bon

Hesh-lon

/ Math-on-ih-ah

Jacob

It,

Mil-com

Com

Gath

j- Jacob-u-gath

Gim-zo

Gim-gim-no

Josh-u-a

Josh

Hag-gai

Hag-oth

Gath

O-gath

Jeho-ash

Jeho-cab

Shem
Shim-ron

f Shem-non

Eli-a-kim
Shiz-a

j Eim
1 Eim-nor
Shiz

I Shem-lon
1 Shim-nil-on
I Shim

Tubal
Zara /
Hem-dan f

Tubal-oth
Zara-hem-la

Nephi
Enoch

f Nephi-h-ah
( Ze-nephi
Z-enock

f Amni-gad-d-ah
j Gad-iandi
] Gad-iant-on

Enos

Z-enos

Gad

Ammon

Ammon-ih-a

Par- ah

Anti-par-ahh

L Gad-iomn-ah

Sar-ah

Sar-i-ah

Amal-ek

Amal-icki-ah

Nim-rod

Nimrah

Jon-ah

Ant-(j)i-on-ah

Nahor

Nehor

Gil-gal

Gil-g-ah

Jared

Shared

Shilo

Shilo-m

Shillem

Shilem

Elam

He-lam-an

Sidon

Sidom

Hem-dan

Hem

Zorab

Zoram

Nahum

Nahom

Onam

Ante-onum

Shur

j Shurr

1 Sher-riz-ah

Emmer

Emer

Etham

Ethem

Ah-i-ah

Ah-ah

Ezra

Ezrom

Ah-i

Ah-a

Jacob

Jacom

Rib-blah

Rip-l-ah

Mosol-lamon

Laman

Ab-(sa)-lom

Ab-lom

Omar

Omer

Aaron

j Am-aron

Shiz-a

Shez

i. Amm-aron

Shulam

Shule

Amnon

Amnor

Zera

Zeram

Melech

Melek

Jashen

Jashon

Jordan

Jordon ■

HEBREW ANALOGIES IN THE BOOK OF MORMON. 239

The names that appear in the foregoing lists, from Zara to
the close, comprise a class in which it appears very probable that
most of the variations from the Biblical standard are due to modi-
fications in their orthography by the Nephites, and when we con-
sider that these people were cut off entirely from communication
with their brethren in Palestine during the whole period while the
Book of Mormon history was making, it is not strange that such
changes in some of the Jewish names were made. Their occur-
rence was inevitable under the circumstances; and they are just
as necessary and valuable as evidence to sustain the authenticity
of the Book of Mormon record, as the remarkable features of cor-
respondence connected with the names in the first part of the
exhibit are. Our case would be very defective without these vari-
ations.

Taking the names that have been given above as of Jewish
origin, and this course seems fully justified, and adding them to those
in the Book of Mormon that are identical in every way with Biblical
names, there are fully sixty per cent of all that occur in the
former work that are Hebraic on their face — about thirty per
cent in the foregoing lists alone.

(to be continued.)
Flagstaff, Ariz.

Thrift, Thrift, Horatio.

John D. Rockefeller never wearies of impressing on the young the
folly of mean and parsimonious habits. In one of his most recent inter-
views he said:

"These miserly people reap nothing but discomfort from their false
economies. Take, for example, the case of Mrs. Silas Long of Sussex.

" 'Martha,' said old Silas one fall day, T think I'll go and get a few
apples from the orchard.'

"He looked at her timidly. She said:
' 'Well, be careful now, Si, only to pick the bad ones.'

"Suppose there ain't no bad ones, Martha?'

" 'Then ye'll have to wait till some goes bad, of course,' the old
lady snapt. 'We can't afford to eat good, sound fruit wuth three cents
a bushel." — St. Louis Globe- Democrat.

The Purpose of Education.

BY J. P. MAY.

All people are agreed that man should be educated, but just
what education should consist of is perhaps a mooted question.
Very little disagreement is found, however, regarding the found-
ation, which is the common school course; this is recognized as
necessary for the foundation of every child's training. The gen-
eral tendency of the times is towards the plan of giving to each
student that class of knowledge for which nature has best fitted
him, in order that he may be of most use to society, and to him-
self. After the common school course is completed, all additional
training should be given with the aim in view of developing the
pupil along those lines for which he is adapted, and, at the same
time, make a normal man of him, with the greatest degree of
efficiency compatible with such normality. That such is recog-
nized as a good standard, is evident wherever education is an
issue. If this standard could be followed more closely, we should
have a better class of graduates from our high schools than those
usually turned out, and college education would be less of a prob-
lem. To give a boy a thorough course in classics, when he is a
natural mechanic, is quite contrary to the theories of proper
development. Knowledge is becoming too complex for one per-
son to be a master of more than one subject or department, hence
the all-important question is, what shall be best for my boy?
Whose is the duty of determining just what course the young
man shall take? Teachers find that the parent ofttimes knows
little about the real genius of the child. On the other hand,
many teachers are incompetent to advise the youth properly. It

THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION. 241

is evident that the co-operation of student, parent and teacher is
the only successful method.

Mainly as a result of improper development, we see on all
sides young men who have studied their sciences and their arts, and
still are not that which they wished themselves to be, and not the
class of trained citizens which the state and nation needs most.
Perhaps our commercial spirit is partly responsible for the produc-
tion of young people trained, but still unfitted, for practical life.
"How much money can I earn?" is the ever-present problem before
the average young man. In order to get students, the monetary
side of an education has been made too prominent by various
schools, the result being that young people go to school mainly for
the purpose of finding a way, in order that they may get along
with less work and more money. The fact that all earth-creatures
were adapted for activity, and that man must actually labor, both
with his hands and with his brain, is almost lost sight of in many
schools. Idleness has killed far more people than war, disease
and natural calamities ever killed. Work, good, honest toil, is the
maker of men, without which no man can properly develop or evolve.
There are other results of faulty or wrongly directed education,
chief among which is the production of arrogance and vanity. If
education does not prove a sure cure for conceit, then there is
something wrong with the system or methods.

Educators generally agree that to train a youth properly due
attention must be given to the spiritual, the intellectual and the
physical. Accepting this self-evident proposition, it is quite
remarkable how unbalanced some training really appears.

It is not enough that students be taught that every cause has
its effect, and that each effect is the result of a definite cause.
In training the young man, he should at all times be instructed to
classify and correlate his knowledge. Leaving aside the improve-
ment of the physical, let us look into the results of the lack of
correlation between the intellectual and the spiritual instruction.
The writer has met hundreds of young men who have received
high school and college training, and yet are very deficient in
spirituality. Having taken the best that good parents have accu-
mulated; having been given all the love that fond parents can
bestow, still there are those who scoff at the ideas and modes of

242 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

life of "father and mother." One can often hear the young man
say, "0 I have learned more than they. I find that all religions
are man-made, and that all men are working for their own wel-
fares. If I live a good life, pay my debts, and help the poor, I
shall get along about as well as my forefathers." For such
reasons as these he quits his church, or allows his name to remain
on the record while he does nothing for the advancement of the
faith of his fathers. The cause of such conclusions is a lack of
assimilation of truths. Harmonization of all facts is not suffi-
ciently prominent in education. If such correlation and harmo-
nization of truths, for the purpose of solving life's secrets, were
given due attention, a remedy for low spirituality would soon be
disclosed.

Our young men study sociology, and yet fail to apply the
truth that the grade of a society can be found from the degree in
which people unite to form co-operative assemblages. Instead of
getting out of all church work, because he does not agree with
every detail of doctrine, the broad-minded man will endeavor to
improve the weak places and harmonize the apparent discords.
There are many who wear a sure sign of superficiality and lack of
proper reasoning by claiming they need no religion, and acting as
though they really require no assistance from anyone. The interde-
pendence of social units is lost sight of in the mist which improp-
erly correlated truths have cast over the sight. Many forget that
if all men were like themselves, there would be no religions and no
governments— no civilization. The fact that all men are trying
to follow the line of least resistance means too much to our young
people. They forget that Old Earth was specially created for
just such a class of creatures; that one who slumbers too long
must lose his identity, his name passing away from among men.

Only three generations from "shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves"
still rules in the families of the aristocrats. The rich father sel-
dom has a son like the sire, because improper education over-bal-
anced the youth. The heart of religion is brotherhood. The man
who fails to do all in his power to assist the spirit of brotherly
love has received wrong education.

One can see many men who refuse to have anything to do with
religion because they cannot understand all its principles. Of

THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION. 243

course when a doctrine is proved to be wrong it should be cast
aside, but because an idea is not understood, is no indication of
its being illogical. Because he cannot grasp the whole, and
understand every detail, the young man leaves the church. One
can see the same person relying on his arithmetic, and yet, perhaps,
he never did master its principles; he may use and enjoy an elec-
tric light without knowing the secrets of electricity; survey with
the transit, without knowing much about magnetism, or get mar-
ried on slight acquaintance. Is he consistent in demanding that
religion be entirely explained?

President Eliot recently spoke about a new religion. Judg-
ing from the records of the past, this new religion will contain all
the essentials of true religion as we have it, and have added to it a
constant stream of truth, correlated and arranged about the same.
This great educator recognized the fact that we need religion and
must ever have it. Man has developed far enough to prove as
true the fundamentals of religion. The duality of man demands
religion. Science is a real brother to religion, and in no case has
she weakened the faith, of the properly educated man, in God.
We have dreamed a greater God, that is all. To him who has been
blinded by superficial facts, "God is lost amid his stars."

Science tends to prove that matter is becoming crystallized.
There is some good evidence to show that the moon is gradually
becoming purified by crystallization. Judging from the luxuriant
growth of vegetation and varied and huge animals that once grew
on this globe, compared with present flora and fauna, our sphere
is traveling towards a state of freedom through being crystallized.
The sea of glass, which John the Revelator saw, may actually yet be
seen. Any man who is broadly and properly educated must surely be-
come humble and prayerful - there is no knowledge, properly corre-
lated, that should make him otherwise. True humility is a sign of pro-
gress, especially when the humble man possesses a good store of
knowledge, gleaned from life's many sources. There is no ground
on which any argument against spiritual education can rest; on the
contrary we have a thousand facts to justify faith in the dictates
of the inner man.

Milford, Utah.

Salvation Universal.

BY JOSEPH F. SMITH, JR., ASSISTANT CHURCH HISTORIAN.

III.

Salvation for the dead was understood in the days of the
primitive Christian Church, and to some extent baptisms for the
dead continued to be performed until A. D. 379, when the Council
of Carthage forbade any longer the administration of this ordi-
nance and "holy communion" for the dead. Paul uses baptism for
the dead as an argument against the Corinthian Saints, who, even
in that day, were falling away from the true gospel. These
saints understood the doctrine of baptism for the dead, yet they
doubted the general resurrection. Paul argues with them thus:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say
some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there
be no resurreetion of the dead, then is Christ not risen . And if Christ
be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain-
Yea, and we are found false witnesess of God; because we have testi-
fied of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that
the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this
life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But
now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them
that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resur-
rection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive. '. . . Else what shall they do which are baptized for
the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the
dead? and why stand we in jeopardy every hour":*

*I Cor. 15: 12-30.

SALVA T10N UNIVERSAL. 245

Joseph Smith, the prophet, informs us that salvation for the
dead was introduced in the days of Christ who had reference to
this subject when, in addressing the Jews, he said: "That upon
you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from
the blood of the righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son
of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this gener-
ation."* Commenting on this, the prophet said the reason that
generation would have to answer for the blood of the righteous
from Abel to Zacharias, was that in their day the privilege of per-
forming the ordinances in behalf of the dead, was within their
power, while it had been denied anciently. "Hence," said he,
"as they possessed greater privileges than any other generation,
not only pertaining to themselves, but to their dead, their sin was
greater, as they not only neglected their own salvation, but that of
their progenitors, and hence their blood was required at their
hands. t

In this same article the prophet declared that Obediah was
speaking of salvation for the dead when he said, "And saviors
shall come upon Mount Zion, to judge the Mount of Esau, and the
kingdom shall be the Lord's. "$

The work of saving the dead has practically been reserved
for the dispensation of the fulness of times, when the Lord shall
restore all things. It is, therefore, the duty of the Latter-day
Saints to see that it is accomplished. We cannot do it all at
once, but will have the thousand years of the Millennium to do it in.
In that time the work must be done in behalf of the dead of the
previous six thousand years for all who need it. Temples will be
built for this purpose, and the labor in them will occupy most of
the time of the Saints.

One of the most important prophecies, pertaining to the dead,
is that of Malachi. He prophesied that the Lord would send Elijah,
the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
the Lord, for the purpose of turning the hearts of the fathers to

* Matt. 23: 35, 36.

f Times and Seasons 3: 761.

X Obediah 21.

246 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest the
earth be smitten with a curse, when the Lord should come. This
prophecy, which is not understood by the world, has come to pass.
When the Angel Moroni appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith,
September 21, 1823, among the passages of scripture he quoted
that were about to be fulfiled, was this prophecy of Malachi's-
but he quoted it with this variation: "Behold, I will reveal unto
you the priesthood by the hand of Elijah, the prophet, before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall
plant in the hearts of the children the promise made to the fath-
ers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If
it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his
coming.''*

From this, we see that Elijah's mission was to restore that
priesthood which would turn the hearts of the children to their
fathers, according to a promise that had been made to the fathers.
That it was extremely important and necessary, is shown in the
fact that the whole earth would be utterly wasted at the coming of
the great and dreadful day of the Lord, if this priesthood were not
restored. This quotation deeply impressed the prophet
at that time, although he could not understand it. Three
times that night it was repeated, and again on the following day.
Gradually, as link after link of the gospel chain was revealed, and
the keys and powers were bestowed, the prophet increased in wis-
dom and knowledge. In time, a temple was built in Kirtland, but
in it there was no baptismal font, or any ot-her provision made for
ordinance work for the dead. The reason is that the doctrine had
not been fully revealed. This temple, however, served the purpose
for which it was erected, a house of the Lord, where he could
come, and send his angels to bestow keys and authority necessary
in this dispensation. In this temple, April 3, 1836, the Savior
and many of the ancient prophets appeared to Joseph Smith and
Oliver Cowdery and bestowed upon their heads the keys of the
several dispensations. Among these heavenly visitors came
Elijah, who placed his hands on the heads of Joseph Smith and
Oliver Cowdery, and gave them the priesthood spoken of by Mala-

*Hhtory of the Church. Vol. 1: 12.

SALVATION UNIVERSAL. 247

chi. "Therefore," said he, "the keys of this dispensation are
committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the
great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors.*

What was the promise made to the fathers that was to be ful-
filed in the latter-days by the turning of the hearts of the child-
ren to their fathers? It was the promise of the Lord made
through Enoch, Isaiah, and the prophets, to the nations of the
earth, that the time should come when the dead should be
redeemed. And the turning of the hearts of the children is fulfiled
in the performing of the vicarious temple work and in the prep-
aration of their genealogies. Up to the time of Elijah's visit,
there had been nothing done for the dead. The doctrine was not
understood by the Saints, and there was no temple built where the
ordinances could be performed. But as soon as this priesthood
was restored, the hearts of the children commenced turning to-
ward their fathers.

The knowledge of temple building and temple work was
made known to the prophet from time to time subsequently to the
3rd of April, 1836, and he commenced to reveal these things to the
Saints. In Nauvoo they were commanded to build a temple to
the Lord, for only in temples can these ordinances be performed,
excepting in times of extreme poverty, when they cannot build
temples for that purpose. "For this ordinance belongeth to my
house," says the Lord, "and cannot be acceptable to me (i. e. out-
side of the Lord's house) only in the days of your poverty, wherein
ye are not 'able to bifild a house unto me."t As the Latter-day
Saints were in this poverty-stricken condition when they settled at
Nauvoo, the Lord granted them the privilege of baptizing for the
dead in the Mississippi river, until a place could be prepared for
the ordinance in the temple. Just as soon as a font could be pre-
pared in the temple, the Lord, by revelation, discontinued baptisms
for the dead in any other place. It was October 3, 1841, when
this revelation was given, and on the 8th of the following month,
the font in the temple at Nauvoo was dedicated, and from that
day, until the Saints were driven from Illinois, that ordinance con-

* Doc. and Cov. 110: 16.
t Doc. and Cov. 124: 30.

248 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

tinued to be performed by them in that house in behalf of their
dead.* After arriving in Salt Lake valley, the first commandment

* Some of those who would destroy the work of God, have declared
that the Church was rejected, with its dead, because the temple at Nau-
voo was not finished; and, say they, the Lord, in this revelation, declared
that he would give the Saints sufficient time to build a house (temple)
unto him, and if they failed to build it in the sufficient time, they would
be rejected with their dead. The fact is, that the Nauvoo Temple was
built, and many of the Saints received their endowments in it, and
labored for their dead before they were finally driven from Nauvoo by
their enemies. But the meaning of this revelation is perverted; the Lord
did not say he would reject the Church, with its dead, if they failed to
build the temple, but that they would be rejected if they did not perform
the ordinances for their dead in the temple when it was prepared for that
purpose. Here is the commandment in question (sec. 124: 31-35):

"But I command you, all ye my Saints, to build a house unto me;
and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me, and dur-
ing this time your baptisms [i. e. outside of a temple] shall be accept-
able unto me.

"But, behold, at the end of this appointment [i. e. the sufficient time]
your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me [i. e. out-
side of a temple] and if ye do not these things at the end of the appointment,
[?'. e. temple work] ye shall be rejected as a Church, with your dead,
saith the Lord your God.

"For verily I say unto you, that after you have had sufficient time to
build a house to me, wherein the ordinances of baptizing for the dead
belongeth, and for which the same was instituted from before the foundation
of the world, your baptisms for your dead [i. e. in any other place than in a
temple] cannot be acceptable unto me, for therein are the keys of the
holy priesthood ordained that you may receive honor and glory.

"And after this time [when a house is prepared] your baptism for the
dead, by those who are scattered abroad, are not acceplable unto me,
saith the Lord," [Italics and brackets are mine. J. F. S., Jr.]

And if ye do not these things at the end of the appointment, obviously
does not mean "if you do not build a temple at the end of the appoint-
ment," as our critics claim it does, but it refers to the ordinances that
were to be performed in the temple, and the failure on the part of the
Saints to perform these ordinances for their dead was the thing that
would cause their rejection with their dead, and not the failure to build

SALVATION UNIVERSAL. 249

President Young received from the Lord was to commence to build
a temple where this work could be continued. The members of
the Church responded, and four temples have been built, where
the living now go to officiate for the dead.

The restoration of Elijah's priesthood accomplished more than
the turning of the hearts of the members of the Church
to their fathers, for the spirit of his mission spread forth
and took hold of the hearts of the honorable men and women in
the world who have been directed, they know not why, to spend
their time and means in preparing genealogies, vital records and
various other genealogical data, which they are publishing
at great labor and expense.

It is a curious and interesting fact that the year following
the coming of Elijah, the British government passed laws requir-
ing the proper recording of records, and the filing of them in one
central place. In the year 1844, the New England Historical and
Genealogical Society was organized in Boston; in 1869 the New
York Genealogical and Biographical Society was incorporated in
New York. Other societies have been organized from time to
time in America, principally in the New England States, and they
are publishing quarterly genealogical magazines and registers,
family records, etc.: disseminating information continually regard-
ing our ancestors, that is useful to the Latter-day Saints. The
New England Society is publishing, as they express it in their
magazine, "by a fund set apart from the bequest of Robert

the temple, which was merely the edifice in which the saving principles
were to be performed. This is in harmony with the teachings of the
Prophet Joseph Smith, who said that if we neglect the salvation of our
dead "we do it at the peril of our own salvation! Why? Because we with-
out them cannot be made perfect" (Doc. and Cov. sec. 28: 15).

The virtue of salvation for the dead is not in the structure of the
temple, but in the ordinances which are performed in the temple. The
temple is to the ordinances just what the vessel is to the life-giving
nourishment it contains. Those who would reject us on a technicality,
because, as they say, "we did not finish the temple," neither build
templesn or perform the ordinances for the dead, wherein they prove their
rejection by the Lord, according to the revelations of Joseph Smith, the
prophet.

250 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Henry Eddy," to the society, the vital records (births, marriages
and deaths) of towns in Massachusetts, whose records are not
already printed from the beginning to the year 1850. This is
a tremendous work, many volumes of these records have been pub-,
lished, and others are in course of preparation.* Eventually they
will be printed by this and other similar societies in Massachusetts,
a state that has set the pace for her sister states to follow. There,
and in other parts, these societies are protected and encouraged
by legislative enactment. Besides these numerous societies
engaged in this noble work, there are multitudes of individual
laborers who are publishing at their own expense family geneal-
ogies and vital records that extend back for hundreds of years.

In Great Britain the work is carried on by the Harlian Society,
the Genealogist Society, Phillimore & Company, the Lancashire
Parish Register Society, the Yorkshire Parish Register Society,
and similar societies in nearly all of the countries of Great Britain.
These societies publish the parish registers of the several parishes
in England, and to an extent in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

*Other societies in Massachusetts are also preparing vital records,
among them are the Topsfield Historical Society, the Essex Antiquarian
Society, the "Systematic History Fund," Franklin P. Rice, trustee. Of
this work Mr. Rice, who is a pioneer in genealogical research, says:

"I hope sometime to give in detail an account of the various under-
takings in the line of record preservation with which I have been connected
since I began, in the early seventies, with the idea, crude and imper-
fect, of subjecting to classification, for easy reference, manu-
script materials in public dopositories, many of which were
then hidden or unknown, and in many places practically inaccessible.
* * * Thirty-five years ago the interest in such matters was mainly
antiquarian, and the few examples in print in this line had been inspired
from that standpoint. Genealogical research was not the powerful factor
it is today. As the idea expanded and developed, I came to regard the
work chiefly in its practical and scientific aspects, and I applied the term
"Systematic History" as best explaining its purpose, to meet the neces-
sities of all enquirers and investigators. * * I formulated a plan
sometime before 1890 to require the towns in Massachusetts to print
their records, but this met with little favor. Its substantial features
are embodied in the Act of 1902. * * * Pursuing the work since
1898 under the operation of the Systematic History Fund, I have been
able to secure copies and to print the vital records of more than thirty
towns in central Massachusetts.''

SALVATION UNIVERSAL. 251

There is also in Great Britain Lodge's, Debritt's and Burkes'
Peerages and Visitations which are invaluable to the searcher of
genealogical information in those lands. These numerous societies
and individuals in the world, upon whom the spirit of Elijah has
fallen to this extent at least, are compiling, printing and distrib-
uting these records of the dead, faster than the Saints can, with
their present facilities and understanding of the work, obtain
them: In fact, they have far outstripped us in the race, and
while we sometimes are given to boasting of the great work we
are doing for the dead, it is as nothing, a mere drop in the bucket.
These people and societies are helping us, should we not take
every advantage of their labors and stand in the forefront, mag-
nifying our calling and proving our birthright as the children of
Ephraim?

Thus the hearts of the children are gradually, but surely,
turning towards their fathers. The spirit of this work is now
taking hold of the hearts of the people of Germany, Scandinavia
and the continent of Europe. And why are they doing this?
Because their hearts have been drawn out to their fathers, through
the restoration of the keys of salvation for the dead, and they
are energetically and faithfully laboring, but all the while uncon-
scious of the full significance and worth of their labors, simply
because the work appeals to them and they are fascinated by it.
Surely they shall receive their reward!

[to be continued.]
Salt Lake City, Utah.

Rapid Transit.

In response to growing demands in his home, Henry Kitchell Web-
ster, author of The Sky Man, once went to his father's house, borrowed
the family high-chair and started taking it home by hand. Not only did
he have to wait long for his car, but when it finally came its conductor
was a humorist.

"Aren't you pretty big for that chair?" that official ventured.

"Yes," admitted Webster, wearily, "I grew up while waiting for
the car. ' ' — Success.

Dan Hudson's Sacrifice.

A Story for Christmastide.

BY ATTE RA.

I.

The brief tale I am about to tell, has not sweet scented mists
of a romantic "long ago" for its setting. Indeed, but twenty
years have Christmas chimes been rung and Christmas prayers been
said since its happening. And, Christmas story though it is, the
curtain does not once rise to reveal a bright array of candle
lights, and the delightful odor of hemlock and spruce — hallowed
incense of our childhood day. And more— the place is not verdant
hillsides, "where shepherds watched," but a wilderness of sand and
stone, belonging to that unknown and unknowable desert of our
western wonderland, the Colorado Plateau. And, again, the time
is not December, but August — burning, blighting August. Not-
withstanding, I would have you listen, and at Christmastide.

Fourteen years before the August of which I write, a pros-
pector, known in eastern parlance as mountaineer, drifting slowly
westward, found a desert of stone, cut and creased with canyons,
the most wonderful in all the world. In one little canyon, or
gorge, fifty miles from any human habitation, he found a stream
and a stretch of land. In this little valley, or vale, (where was
rich soil and bright verdure) he built a home, which on all
sides, save an opening to the west, was walled in by cliffs of sand-
stone, red and treeless. Thither, from far-off new England hills,
he brought his young wife and three toddling babes.

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 253

It was now the thirteenth anniversary of that home-coming,
and the white heat, in which all nature swooned, was typical.
Great masses of blue-gray clouds shifted, and, as if impelled by
some power above and beyond, slowly rose from the horizon line.
Their rifts and borders dashed with glints from the setting sun,
quivered and glowed like living flame.

"Ah, a dark cloud with a bright lining!"

The exclamation came from a youth, who stood upon the brow
of a rockbound ridge, beside the ruins of a mighty cliff, and
dreamed a dream of the future.

For more than an hour loving eyes —the eyes of a mother—
had watched him there, as the twilight cut a silhouette of his lithe
young form against the amber of the sky.

"An artist," she murmured. "I know, I know, it was in my
father's blood, it was my heritage, it is his— thank God?"

She knew not that her son's gaze was far beyond the band of
clouds, and that the burst of light had but that moment called
him from his dream.

A harsh voice shouting, "Whoa, there, you black beast!"
startled the woman, and she hastened from the boulder on which
she leaned, down rugged, stony steps, through a tangle of brush
to the garden path, where she met a broad, stalwart man, the
master of her mountain home.

"Get the milk buckets, Annie," was his only greeting, after
a day's absence. "That blamed boy has gone daft, I 'spose —
stands there on the ledge watchin' for the cows that's bin in cor-
ral since sun. I'll have 'em to milk, tired as I am, unless you'll
give a hand."

Not tonight, Abraham. I've been ill all day, and came out
only for a fresh breath.

"Sick, are you!" returned the husband gruffly. "Well, then,
why in thunder don't yu' go to bed, instead of whinin' 'round
here?"

With this angry remark he grabbed her arm, and pushed her
rudely from the path. The same instant he felt a powerful hand
grasp his collar, and before resistance could be made, he was
whirled around and left sitting upon the ground. Over him tow-
ered an angry man; a man of six feet and broad chest; a man

254 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

whose brown, mobile face had suddenly turned to stone; a man
whose eyes flashed fire from the passion that burned within; a man
— his son Dan, the "boy who had gone daft."

In an instant the startled, breathless man was on his feet, and
the two, father and son, glared at each other with fists clenched
and bestial eyes. The young man first relaxed.

"Father," he cried out, with a fearless voice, "for twenty
years you have kept me in the traces; but henceforth I am a man,
and shall take the part of a man, as I now perform the labor of
one; and if you ever again, to my knowing, either by word or by
touch, offer my mother an insult, to a man, sir, you shall answer
— God witness between us."

A low moan from the woman, who had fallen prostrate, with
a pallor as of death upon her face, arrested the attention of the
men. The son, with a spring swift and agile as a cat's, reached
the mother's side, and with strong arms bore her tenderly to a place of
rest. At that moment the canyon rang with the vibrant echoes
of loud halloos. Dogs barked; horses whinnied; and the moun-
taineer hastened to the broad lane, where he swung apart heavy
gates that opened from the white, dusty canyon road below, to his
verdant home. Dan and Dan's mother, (just awakened from her
faint) knew by the hearty, ringing, "Ho, ho, friends, welcome to
the hermitage!" that Abraham Hudson, the master, would make
good his reputation for hospitality, and do credit to his moun-
tain appellation, "prospector's pard."

II.

A week had passed since the altercation in the garden path.
Hudson had been genial, as usnal, to his visiting friends, prospec-
tors from the river eighty miles away; but to his family glum and
morose. With a gruff "good bye," called out as he released the
creaking brake to his wagon, he started off on one of his two
week trips to "the towns." Ah, that two weeks!

To the mother, in her after years, as she looked back over
the pathway of her woman's life, it was the hour of her heart's
sweetest triumph. There she was, in the great silence of thewilder-
ness,shut in by walls towering and omnious,but with a gladsome, ca-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 255

ressing child (her little girl Elin — her rose of the desert) clasped in
her arms, and, protectingly at her side, her boy, her first-born, now a
man; and to her came the solace for a mother's long anxiety. For
twenty years she had watched her boy, a divine mystery of budding,
growing, blossoming manhood. What a stretch of uncertainty,
what a record of watching, waiting, praying! It was all before
her, a picture that could fade only with the light of life. The
first sharp wail that announced the little one's arrival from a great
unknown; the first glimpse of a tiny face that fancy had long por-
trayed; the first touch of eager lips; the first thrill from the
quivering baby form that seemed to struggle for protection and
for love. Yes, the helpless infant, the gladsome child, the quiet,
dreaming youth, she had watched them all in him, and now — the

man

Much had come into that stretch of twenty years' time.
Three of the little ones who had found in that mother's arms a
cradle of rest, had grown strangely cold and quiet beneath her
watch care. Death had found that home in the rocks. Three
times the strong man and the fragile woman, husband and wife,
had bowed together in the presence of the grim reaper. Three
times were their souls laid bare in grief; and drawing near to
mourn their common loss, they had seemed to understand and to
thank God for each other. Silently, and none knew whence -per-
chance in the noon-day glare and heat of toil -perchance in the
quiet hours when shadows crept, unseen powers had parted those
human hearts, drawn closer by the hand of sorrow than by the
bonds of love. And yet, the woman toiled on, a loneliness in her
soul more vast, and more terrible, than that in the silent, lifeless
rocks. He, who should have been her refuge, drew ever nearer to
the worship of hidden gold, ever farther from humankind, and
ever farther from his God. There, during the master's absence,
in the long twilights, and in the glory of desert moonlight, those
two, mother and son, held communion; and found that sweetest
comradship the world affords, the sympathy of souls.

As the mother sat, one bright evening, with Elin's head pil-
lowed in her lap, Dan listened till the child slumbered, and the
lullabys were hushed; when, suddenly, he began to talk with an
earnest vehemence she had never heard before from him.

256 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

"Mother," he said, "it seems strange to me in what utter
blindness human beings can live. Do you know, mother, what my
six months away at school did for me? To be sure I learned but
little of grammar and arithmetic in that time, but in some miracu-
lous way, everybody and everything I had known, myself included,
had their masks pulled off; and the world became a different place.
I learned that I was not quite like other boys from ranch homes. I
could read and write with ease; and, to my own surprise, possessed
quite a treasury of historical knowledge — the tales you had so
often told, and encouraged me to retell. My knowledge of the
Bible, too, you think me dull in that, but my teacher thought it
did me credit. That teacher taught us other and better things,
mother, than our books contained; and I feel, somehow, that he
opened for me the doors to another sphere where — where — well, I
don't exactly know where, or what, only this: God has given me
talents and powers, and I mean to use them for my own betterment
and to his glory. I'm not content to be a cunning fox with a hole
in the rocks of this desert."

Dan's eyes flashed, but his voice grew strangely low and
musical, vibrant with boyish passions long pent up.

"Mother, my jnother,'1 and he took a step nearer in reveren-
tial attitude, then, bending low, he touched the soft waves of her
hair with his lips. "Mother," again he said, "do you know, I
can't help but think that your companion — your husband, I mean —
should have been like that man, that teacher I adore."

• The mother started, her lips moved, but she made no sound,
and her son went on:

"I know that my father took you when you were a young,
homeless orphan, and made you his wife. You were grateful, you
even loved him, for he was a hero in your eyes. Your love and
gratitude, I know, also, will end in a life-long constancy, in unend-
ing devotion, and what does he give, what will he give in return?
He promised protection, to love and cherish. You believed, rough
and uncouth though he seemed, that he would always be gentle
with you; that you would be his helpmeet, his wife, his queen!
And now, how is it? He desired gold, not the gold of honest toil,
and great achievement, but gold that waits far off in the pockets
of the earth, for the grasp of the adventurer. His manly endur-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 257

ance, his fearless exploits were, I grant, from the hero's soul, but
to what end did he so desire weal ill? Did he ever strive for the
welfare of mankind, for the betterment of the world, or was his
hunger but the miser's greed? In his efforts to gratify the appe-
tite for adventure and for gain, did he ever pause for one moment
to consider what wilderness life would mean to his frail, young wife?
I think not. She was dragged from pillar to post, to live in tents, in
hovels, in unsheltered wilderness camps. Every craving of his
restless, roving nature he has pampered and fed, while her heart
has gone forever hungry. Three of her babes, snatched by the
hand of death from her warm breast, are laid where the wolf will
forever howl, and the viper forever find his home. Abram Hudson's
wife, his gentle, loving wife — my mother, is a bond woman; and it
breaks the heart of her son. My father has gold now, sufficient
for a home in civilized lands, with rest for his wife and education
for his children. Will he leave this place, think you, where, among
his fellows, (self-made outcasts of society) he is a chieftain, a
'hale fellow well met?' Never, unless help comes from One greater
than man; which, for his sake and for ours, may the Father above
grant. Do you know, mother, that already he entices me with
gold to give up my school, my ambition, all that would make me
worthy of companionship with noble men, men of action, men of
culture, that he may have my service here?

"Once he was, to my childish mind, what he is now to my
little sister's, a great man, a hero of many daring deeds, and my
self-sacrificing mother helped to keep up the illusion; hut his
boasts — "

"Dan, Dan, my boy!" interrupted the mother, with pleading
exclamation; but, with impulsive gesture, the lad went on, his
words quick, his voice tense from the train of thought bursting
from a long silence:

"I know, I know, mother — 'children should honor and obey,
that their days may be long,' and all that. I should pray for my
days to be short in this land which the Lord giveth to howling
beasts and creeping reptiles. Poor honor, it seems to me, is that
a parent might gain through a child's greed, and not his love; and,
oh, how bitter for a loving child to learn that honor is undeserved!
To little Elin, father is now as great as the kings in her story

258 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

books, but to father, what is little Elin? A princess deserving all
that he can bestow, or a child born to serfdom, whom he has the
right to imprison here in this cage of scorching, blistering rock?

"Hear me, mother, for this once I must speak the bitter
truth that eats at my heart. I must tell you— he— is— a — hard —
man— a— grim — jailor! whose passions have been his highest law;
and yet, according to his own code, my father, thank God, is a
man of high honor, and, psrchance, in his stony heart may yet
be found a crevice of untarnished gold. Listen, mother!" Dan's
voice was low and sweet again, "listen — I have vowed to rescue
you and Elin, and perchance the grim jailor, too, from this prison
house! How, I know not, but my faith is great, and the Lord
will be my support."

Together, that night, Dan and his mother prayed as they had
never prayed before, for divine guidance. The next day was one
of earnest fasting and petition. Dan decided to help his father
for a few months longer, when the freighting season would be over
and contracts with the miners would be fulfiled; then, at the begin-
ning of the new year, to set out for school and for a new life."

"I have," he said, "a little means of my own, and on Decem-
ber 25, I shall be what the law calls of age. That, mother, will
be my second real birthday: but I shall wish you still to feel that
I am yours —your Christmas child grown to manhood; and may the
day come when you will feel that this great world of evil and of
good, is a little better because your child has lived."

Mrs. Hudson listened to her son with infinite pride and with
infinite pain in her face. Did the thought of parting with her son
bring with it a premonition of ill? or had she in that thought come
very near in sympathy to the mother of sorrows, whose Son
was a sacrifice for the whole world?

Tenderly Dan kissed her white, pain-stricken face.

"Don't grieve, mother," he said; "I have looked forward for
years and years to the birthday when it will be my right to choose.
Not for myself alone have I wished it; but that I may go from this
place, which has never once seemad to me a right place in which
to live; for, even when a child, I caught the spirit of your loneli-
ness and my own; and I resolved some day to go forth and build a
home, a real home, for you, and for father, too, should he wish.

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 259

Every time I heard a wolf howl, something in my heart would say,
'This is his home and not yours, go! go! and leave the wilderness
to him.'

"Mother," again Dan pleaded, "think not of that dear Christ-
mas with a heart of dread; for on that day I shall be more to you
than I have ever been, and I feel in my very soul that the Lord will
make it for us all the beginning of a new life."

III.

August heat, white, sifting, penetrating, had burned for nearly
thirty days. The scant vegetation of the desert had turned gray
and crisp; but the sandstone wilds, though submitted for thous-
ands of times to that furnace heat had not yet turned molten. The
silence was so vast it seemed to bound the very earth, and to stifle
every breath of air; and yet this silence was one day broken.
Living, moving specks, men with their beasts of burden, threaded
a pathway through the rock-bound sands.

Abram Hudson and his son, for they it was who traveled
the desert through the August heat, were on their way with food
and supplies for a prospector's store or cache, whence miners would
fetch them to their camps. Though but the fulfilment of a con-
tract, that meant to the two men a dangerous trip for a handful
of gold, its non-fulfilment would have been dishonor to themselves,
suffering and, perchance, death to their fellows.

The travelers had made use of the long, shadowy, but not
cool hours before daybreak, hoping to find some sort of shelter
and rest during the noontime heat.

To save three days of travel, and to insure, as they believed,
water for man and beast, the freighters had left the circuitous
mountain trail for a cut-off leading through a rock chasm which
was, at flood time, a river bed. Like the walls of Colorado's grand
canyon, the cliffs on either side of the wash were, for hundreds of
feet, perpendicular and impenetrable; in truth, a sixty mile crack or
crevice in the solid rock. In these great walls, though often miles
apart, were huge, hollow, basin-like shelves, known as water pock-
ets. The spring rains filled these pockets making reservoirs of
water that lasted for months; and to their existence many travel-

260 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

ing prospectors owed their lives. The Hudsons planned to water
at the fifteen-mile pocket soon after sunrise, and at the twenty-
mile pocket to pitch camp. At this pocket was a cross-cut crevice
in the cliffs, which afforded a steep and rugged pathway to the
heights abov^e, the only outlet for human feet within a forty-mile
stretch; and, in case of cloudburst storms, the only place of
escape from the torrent that sometimes filled the wash.

The trip from Muddy Springs, had been a rough ride, long
and dry; and as the little party neared the first pockets the horses
sniffed and whinnied, and the men wet their lips and parched
throats with the last insipid drops from their canteens. To their
dismay they found the pockets, large and always before well filled,
nearly dry. The horses rubbed their noses in the basins of mud
while the men climbed to the shelves above.

No water was found. Would another stretch of five miles
bring them relief? To return to the springs they had left behind,
in that more than tropic heat, seemed impossible; while to push
on to the next pockets, and find no water, they knew meant cer-
tain death.

The men looked at each other in silence. "God have mercy!"
muttered the elder! Dan's answer was a long and searching look
at the clouds above. Men had been rescued from that furnace by
sudden rains, and men, he knew, had died in that pitiless heat.

Both men, without a word, took from their empty canteens a
mouthful of damp coffee grounds, and mounting their jaded beasts
urged them slowly on. They had dropped the loads from the pack
animals, and one was left to die.

Abram Hudson's .face soon grew purple, and his tongue
swelled. Dan pushed ahead at a slightly quicker pace, found
water, and hastened on the return track, to find his father fallen
from his horse, unconscious.

At sunset that day both men and animals were in camp,
refreshed and rested; but the supply of water from the lower
pockets was nearly exhausted, and preparations were made for a
climb in the cross-crevice to the basins above.

When half way up the cliff, and the men believed within
short distance of water, they both rested themselves upon a flat
shelf projecting from the cliff. At the shelf's further end a slen-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 261

der pine shot upward, apparently grown from the solid rock. Back
of this, ard running the entire length of the shelf, was a cave,
whether deep or shallow the uncertain light failed to reveal.

"Rest here, father, the climb on up is very steep and will be
too much for you. I'll fill my canteens, if I find water, alone, and
then come for yours."

The father, still weak from the collapse of the morning,
threw himself at full length upon the floor of the shelf, while Dan
climbed slowly and cautiously on. Each shelf grew narrower, and
the loose pieces of rock at their basements more frequent.

Seventy feet above his father's resting place, Dan found water.
While filling his canteen he was startled by a fierce and tremend-
ous growl that seemed to end in a base ruar, as it echoed from
cliff to cliff; while above the awful noise, he heard his father's ter-
rified voice calling for help!

Springing quickly to an overhanging shelf, Dan stretched
himself in position to get a view of the shelf below. There, in the
top of the pine, which swung far out over the gulf below, was his
father, huddled, and crying out hoarsely for help. At the tree's base
floundered and panted a great grizzly bear! With bristling mane
and gnashing teeth, he alternately pawed at the cliff and the
trunk of the tree. Splinters of bark and twigs flew far out into
the air, and dropped to the depths below.

For a moment the bear would rise to his haunches, sniff the
air, and again return to his clawing and his fierce belching growls.
His angtr was furious, and yet he seemed loth to risk his wf ight
upon the slender, swinging tree.

To reach the bed of the wash below, where were guns and
ammunition, Dan would be obliged to cross the entire length of
the ledge on which the angry animal puffed and bellowed, and, were
that possible, he would' doubtless be too late to rescue his father,
whose position seemed to grow every instant more perilous, as the
tree bent with his weight and limbs broke beneath his feet.

For two full minutes, which seemed a time unpardonable, Dan
lay and watched, his whole being surprised and paralyzed. Then,
with a loud shout, he bade his father try to swing his weight
towards the face of the cliff, and to keep tight his hold. Hastily,
then, the lad threw aside canteens, coat and boots. From a little

262 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

leather breast-pouch he hastily withdrew a small packet, which he
slipped beneath his hat-band; and from his trousers pocket he
drew a large, strong-bladed knife, the only weapon in his reach.
With quick steps he descended the rugged pathway of the cliff.
When near his father, and directly above the wide shelf, he
shouted, with clear, unfaltering voice:

"Father, hold steady — tell mother good-bye — God be with
you!"

Lightly he swung to the shelf's edge and paused. The great
maddened beast whirled around, glared at his slender antagonist,
and made a rush. Twice Dan thrust with his knife, and twice the
beast struck back; though fearing, apparently, to get near the
brink where the boy stood to lure him. A moment the bear
paused, then with a fierce gnashing sound of teeth and throat,
and a sideward, swinging rush, he rose to his haunches, extended
his great claws and grabbed at the youth. Dan stepped back. A
terrible cry of protest and of human anguish at that instant
reached his ear.

Without seeming to hear, he sprang forward with a mighty
thrust, throwing his lithe form upon the panting breast of the
furious brute. They grappled — man and beast— struggled, swayed,
and plunged to the depths below!

IV.

Two weeks had passed. The freighters, father and son,
were expected home in twelve days. Anxiously Mrs. Hudson
waited, her only companion the seven-year-old Elin, and a
hired boy.

On the fifteenth day Mr. Hudson drove slowly through the
home gates, with but three of the seven horses he had taken away,
Dan's horse was saddled and riderless. The father was pale and
emaciated, his voice husky, his words of greeting inarticulate.

With trembling limbs he tried to dismount, but fell in an
unconscious heap to the ground. For seven days he writhed and
tossed in fever and delirium. Often he muttered Dan's name and
something about Christmas, but there seemed no connection.

On the eighth day he wakened suddenly and sat up. To his
wife's pitiful pleadings for Dan — for her boy — he said abruptly:

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 263

"Dan! our boy, Dan, oh, yes, Annie, Dan is dead; on Christ-
mas day we will bury him."

Again he relapsed into delirium, and muttered something
about the cliff, the awful gnashing noise, and that terrible, bleed-
ing" wound. These were the only articulate words the eager,
listening woman ever caught.

Slowly the sick man recovered, but was very silent, and the
look of pain ever present in his face hushed the questions of his
wife, and chilled her very soul.

Once her husband put out his hand, as if to touch hers, but
quickly drew it back again, and turned his face to the wall.
When at length he walked about, he avoided his wife and child,
and seemed ever loth to touch things that had belonged to Dan.

Once she caught him intently watching Elin as she slept; and
then, throwing his hands upward as if in dumb, frenzied suppli-
cation, he rushed from the room into the midnight darkness,
whence he returned not until morning.

Once, only once, she saw him lead Dan's horse to water and
caress the animal as it drank.

Then he sat down upon the creek bank and intently eyed his
hands. With a sickening shudder she recalled, now, that he
avoided touching or being alone with her; and that he had ceased
to fondle little Elin, the only being whom he had treated, always,
with tenderness. She recalled, also, in face of all this, that he
had returned from his trip with but scant clothing, and that ter-
ribly begrimed— perhaps stained!

Like a two-edged sword, a great pain entered her heart.
Was he — her husband — a — man— of — guilt? Her whole being was
smitten; but she rose above her stricken self, determined to find
the truth, yet how, God alone could tell! Her very look of fear,
and distress had driven her husband, she felt, to silence. An
attempt to force him, she knew would be as useless as to seek
confession of the hard, unyielding desert cliffs.

Hudson noticed the forced courage, the determination that
had come to her, and grew solicitous, almost tender in his help-
lessness. Nothing was forgotten that would relieve her from
labor or care — no harsh words now, no angry acts, but of Dan he
never spoke.

264 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Three months thus passed. December weather had come,
with cutting winds, but no snow; and the sun was still bright with
a sort of winter glare. The fall work was finished, and Hudson
now grew restless. For hours, through the day and far into the
night, he tramped the garden walk. Two trips he made to distant
towns, and preparations for an unnamed journey seemed under way.

One evening, the twenty-first of December, his tramp, tramp,
on the garden path was quick and impulsive. Finally it stopped
short, and he abruptly entered the room where his wife sat.

"Annie," he said, in a strange, choking voice, "I have sold —
sold the place. I'm going to take you and Elin where people live
— where you'll be happy."

For a moment the gruff man paused, and stifled a sob.

"Annie, wife," he went on, "will you go with me, first, to
bury him? It will be a hard trip; but Dan wished it —on
Christmas — his last words. When we get with Dan, I'll try to tell
you all about it— how he — "

With frightened eyes, Annie sprang to her feet, and stared
into her husband's blanched face; and, for answer she sprang into
his outstretched arms. Upon his heaving breast she sobbed out
the pent up agony, the doubt and distrust of all those cruel
weeks.

On December 25, 18 — , a funeral was held in Big Pocket
Wash, of the Colorado plateaus. Six men had preceded the par-
ents and sister of Dan Hudson, and with strong, tender hands had
made all things ready. For a little time the friends withdrew; and
there, beside an open grave, in which stood a coffin of strong
wood — Dan's last resting place — Abram Hudson told his wife of
his son's sacrifice; and how he had found the unconscious boy, his
flesh mangled and torn, in the embrace of the dead brute; how Dan
had revived before his death, and had sent to his mother a message
of love. He had wished to be buried there in the wash, and on
Christmas day. "I have promised," he said, "to spend Christmas
with my mother. She will come, and the promise will be fulfiled
— her boy will be near."

"I stripped off my clothing, Annie, to bind his bleeding
wounds, and my blankets were his shroud. In the little cave,
there, under the cliff, his body waited for burial; but of his suffer-

DAN HUDSON'S SACRIFICE. 265

ing, Annie — my wife — do not ask. In his hatband I found this —
a tress of his mother's hair, turned round one of his own black
curls; but better than all else were his last dear words— 'As my
mother loves you, and is true, love and cherish her; and forget
not, my father, that the Son of God was sacrificed to save

us all.'"

* * * * * * *

Ten years after the funeral in Big Pocket Wash, of the Colo-
rado plateaus, Abram Hudson, a rugged old man with whitened
hair, was seen to enter a cosy cottage home— his home and
Annie's— in one of Utah's thrifty towns.

"Little mother," he said, (that was his form of tenderest
greeting) "little mother, I have bought Tom Brown's carriage —
don't look frightened, I'm not fixin' to run off. The rig is strong
and easy -riding, and has a warm, thick cover. It is Christmas next
week, you know, and I thought you and me and Elin would just go
and spend it in the wash — a sort of thanksgiving Christmas, Annie.
I'd like to spend a day near Dan, again, and I'd like to tell the
Lord, while I'm there, that we know our blessings are from him,
and are worth more than the gold of the whole world."

Annie Hudson's answer was a sob of unspeakable joy.

Provo, Utah.

The British Budget was rejected by the House of Lords on
November 30, by a vote of 350 to 75. The action was taken against
the advice of many of the peers who warned the Lords of the danger of
the policy adopted. By this action of the Lords a new issue is intro-
duced into British politics, which in importance far transcends the ques-
tion of the budget. The House of Lords is almost entirely a hereditary
body, and the question is whether they have the right to overrule the
House of Commons, which is a representative body, on the questions of
finance. It has never before happened that a budget providing the rev-
enues for the year, duly passed by the House of Commons, has failed to
receive the consent of the House of Lords, and on December 2, the House
of Commdns, by a vote of 349 to 134 adopted a resolution declaring that
the action of the House of Lords was "a breech of the constitution and
a usurpation of the rights of the House of Commons," and on the fol-
lowing day the King prorogued the Parliament until January 17, 1910.
The question now goes to the people.

THE HIGHER VIEW.

"Where, where are the men for the on-coming years?"

A graybeard's disconsolate cry;
For he lives in the pas!, and verily fears

All greatness is dead, or will die.

"Gone, gone are the sires, and the sons are swift passing;

The giants are under the sod.
Where, where are the armies of Israel massing—

The hope of the Kingdom of God?

"Yea, where are the prophets, the songsters, the sages,
God's rulers, through whom he hath reigned

Since Chaos was quickened, and, launched on the ages-
A new world, to glory ordained?

" They are not, they are not, and the fountains are sealed-
Brass above and iron beneath.

Truth's fulness is past, and the portion revealed
Now sleeps as a sword in its sheath."

So the pessimist sang, and his doleful refrain
Smote my ear with sorrowful sound.

Then straightway the spirit within me made plain
A vision from loftier ground:

Not true, said my soul, that the mighty have ceased;
That all greatness is passing away;

Or more precious the knowledge at yesterday's feasl
Than the banquet provided today.

In the wide human fores!:, by Providence planted,
Great trees are yet growing sublime.

When a worn beam shall break—when a new helve is
wanted,
'Twill be found in its season and time.

What though, summoned hence by the Chieftain com-
manding,

Hosts vanish, death-conquered in vain.
On time's stormy shore other legions are landing,

From triumphs on life's spirit plain.

The pasl is the parent— today, a descendant,

Whose heirs are the ages unborn;
Like springing from like, in a scale still ascendant.

Then how shall the future be shorn?

Deem not the all-wise and almighty Creator

Of stars, suns, and systems untold,
A bankrupt to Fate, an apprentice to Nature;

He is God— the same God as of old.

Can the glory now pale— the intelligence perish,

That founded eternity's throne?
When failed the Good Shepherd his chosen to cherish?

Fear not— he will care for his own.

Orson F. Whitney.

Some Men Who Have Done Things.

BY JOHN HENRY EVANS OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' UNIVERSITY

III. — Evan Stephens.

THE GREAT COMMONER IN MUSIC.

Thirty odd years ago two missionaries from Ogden preached
one afternoon in Willard. Now it happened that a beardless
youth of seventeen led the choir there and played the organ, using

hands and feet for the instru-
ment and head for the sing-
ers. After the services, one
of the men said to the other:
"Here's a musical genius,
but he won't stay long in
Willard."

And he didn't.
About the same time
another preacher audaciously
told a Willard congregation
that they were harboring a
genius in their choir leader,
and that presently somebody
would come and take him
away from them. Immedi-
ately the Willardites were
inconsolable. They acted as
if their singing master had
just received a hundred of-
fers, and was on the point of

EVAN STEPHENS.
Director Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir.

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 269

accepting them all. "Don't you leave us, my boy," they expos-
tulated; "you won't find anyone that will love you more than we
do." But the young genius did leave' them, notwithstanding, and
though he found none to give him greater love, he widened
beyond all reckoning the circle of his admiring friends.

That man was Evan Stephens. The very name got to be a
name to conjure with in after years. It became associated with big
things in music. Over all "Mormondom" was it known. Over all
America, too; for "Evan Stephens" and the " 'Mormon' tabernacle
choir" have become familiar to tens of thousands who know noth-
ing else about the Saints and their faith. Indeed, the writer has
met obscure persons in far-off England and Wales, whose notions
of the West were dismal as three rainy days, but whose musical
recollections included the name, Evan Stephens.

But we are getting ahead of our story.

Three and forty years have now elapsed since the Stephens
family reached Willard, fresh from Wales, and a bedraggled
trip across the plains with an ox team. There is a fine story con-
nected with this journey, but it is too long to set down here. The
family purse had sadly dwindled to an American quarter, two dimes,
and a nickel. Luckily, however, a son and a daughter lived there,
having immigrated to Utah some years before. Evan was now
twelve years old, and as untouched by the divine fire as if he had
hailed from a land where music was unknown.

Young Stephens' first job in the new home was herding sheep.
He husked corn at the same time, going up now and then to the
top of an old shed to see that his flock did not stray where his
broken English would have to be brought into too violent a requi-
sition. For this toilsome vigilance he received nothing but the
privilege of herding sheep and husking corn, and the prospects of
a scolding if any of the sheep went astray. Presently he got another
place at an advanced wage; he got his board, and at the end of
the year, a suit of clothes to boot for good service. Like the other,
it was farm work, only more so. But he gave satisfaction,
which proved that the future musician was getting on in the world.
From seventeen to twenty he was still on the farm, getting by now
a small pittance. This meant extremely hard work and long hours,
in consequence of which he had scant time for unbending. Four-

270 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

teen hours a day the work beckoned him insistently — plowing and
sowing and reaping and a thousand and one things that cry out to
be done on the farm. And then there were the chores.

Meantime the Utah and Northern Railroad was under way, and
so, like many others along the line, he worked on it for some ready
cash. Whether it was this that gave him a taste for railroading,
I do not know. Maybe, it was the need for ready cash. Anyhow,
his twentieth year found him a section hand on the newly-completed
railway at a dollar and thirty-seven cents a day. It should also be
known that during these early years when work was slack on the
farm, he had helped to build some of the best houses in Willard.
That is the way Evan Stephens puts it. But between you and me,
his part of this "building" process was carrying the hod!

A refreshing passage in this first record tells us that the boy
liked every sort of work on the farm — except threshing, and the
threshing he disliked merely because the dust had a nasty habit of
getting into his throat, as, indeed, it has with all boys. So, you
see, this was not a case of genius pining under the lash of manual
labor, and waiting for some fairy prince to carry him off to free-
dom and a higher work. Not at all. Evan Stephens did not know
that he was a genius. Only his friends from a distance knew
that. He was too modest even to suspect it. And so he took the
world as it came, plodding along as if he were made of the same
inner stuff with his fellows.

No; that is not quite correct, either. He only appeared to
be going on in that way. In reality he was leading an altogether
different sort of life.

For one evening something happened. It was the first year
after his arrival at Willard, while he worked for his board. The
choir came to the house for practice. Now, whenever this body
of singers came to your house in those days you just had to sing,
that was all; and so young Evan was induced to join the choir.
That marked a distinct epoch in his life. He discovered himself
there and then. It was like suddenly finding yourself in love. The
world all at once took on a new look. The face of things changed.
Instantly there was rhythm in the soughing of the wind, in the
rustling of the leaves, in the grass and the trees and the flowers, in
whatever lived and moved and had its being. And the boy's foot-

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 271

steps unconsciously took on a rhythmic swing as he trod his way,
high-spirited, to and from the field. It was a great moment for
Evan Stephens, and for the whole of "Mormondom," that evening
with the choir in the little town that nestled, and still nestles,
under the protecting brows of that rough old mountain up there in
Box Elder county.

The musical impulse thus received grew into an abiding
passion. John Stephens, Evan's brother, loved music and had an
organ in his home — an incredibly small organ— which he let young
Evan play. The rest of the family wanted it distinctly understood
that they would not be responsible for anything that might happen
to the valued instrument — which shows what they thought of his
musical talents. Very likely though, they had never heard of that
evening with the choir. Well, nothing at all happened to the
organ, but something befel the young musician — he learned to
play with incredible rapidity and skill. Afterwards, in his insati-
able hunt for compositions, he stumbled upon a book of music.
Eureka! He pocketed it forthwith as a pearl of great price, which
it was, for printed music was rare, in Willard, as Lowell's day in
June. Not that the boy knew how to read music, but he meant
to learn, and that, in him, was like knowing. So whenever he
got a spare moment, out came the book for a fresh reading, or
rather, singing. Now, as it happened, it contained "Jerusalem,
my Glorious Home," and one or two more which he knew. He
therefore picked out others from these, and in that way learned
the musical scale and the meaning of the hundred odd little
marks out of which the song birds get such melody.

As for the rest, it came easy enough. He borrowed what-
ever he could of music, in print or manuscript, ate everything
whole, so to speak, and looked about hungrily for more. Once he
came upon a soiled copy of the Messiah. We need no higher
proof of his musical ability than the fact that he, a stripling of
thirteen or fourteen, newly awakened, could even understand this
great classic, let alone being profoundly moved by its great har-
monies. From now on he was constantly associated with every-
thing musical and dramatic in the town. When the ward purchased
an organ, Evan was made organist, and later choir leader,
though without resigning his place at the instrument. It was at

272 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

this time the missionaries discovered the genius lurking in
Willard.

Meantime, Stephens had become, by natural gravitation, the
musical nucleus of the town. The young people gathered about
him. Feeling the need of education — for Evan had only one or
two short winters of schooling — the young men of the town met
for the purpose of studying. They had no teacher, but the more
advanced taught the others. It was a sort of mutual improve-
ment association. Stephens1 example in joining the choir was fol-
lowed by every other young man in Willard. When Evan went to
work on the railroad as section hand, he bought a house and lot
— a two-room, adobe structure with dirt roof — for which he
agreed to pay five hundred dollars. Here he batched it, drawing
around him all the music-lovers of the town. And here they
met to practice for glee club, choir, and dramatic presentations.
To facilitate this work, Evan invested in a small organ, which
could be carried about from place to place wherever they went.

Meanwhile, too, he yearned for some adequate means of self-
expression, not only in the composition of songs, hymns, and
musical plays, but likewise in the better sense of reaching a wider
public, in uplifting as many as possible to the delights of the divine
art. Some of his compositions were published in the Juvenile
Instructor, and two operatics were played, not only at Willard, but
at Logan. It was at this time that Stephens took up first with the
training of children, the thing that brought him into prominence.
"Throughout my life," said he in explanation of this work with
others, when he got nothing for it, "I have found my greatest joy
and my greatest usefulness to others to be one and the same
thing." The instinct of the genuine artist, this, which impels him
to give rather than to be always receiving. And this is the cen-
tral fact in Evan Steptens' life, the fact that will best explain
what he has done.

In his twenty-fourth year he was on the gravel train, which
ran north, and sometimes stayed between Willard and Logan for
days. At such times Evan amused and instructed himself, when
he was not working, by playing on the organ, — for he carried the
instrument with him. Often the young people came from Willard,
and then how all the unpopulous region became alive with song!

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 273

Another thing happened on one of these occasions. Alex.
Lewis, of Logan, leader of the choir there, came into camp one day.
Now the organist in the temple city had gone on a mission, and
they wanted his place filled. "This youth on the gravel train is
my man," thought Lewis. And so an offer was made him. But
Evan, remembering how he was loved at Willard, said he would go
if they found him a place with more money than he was getting.
Thus he thought to throw discouragement in the way. First thing
he knew, however, they sent him word that they had got him a
place at fifty cents a day more than his present wage. Afterwards
he learned that the "place" was not what he thought it was — it
was striker at the Logan shops — but he had given his word, and
that ended it.

At Logan he created a sensation. But the job at the depot
stuck in his throat. And after a reasonable time he returned to
the gravel train among his old friends. The Loganites, though,
had got a taste of his genius and would not give up so easily. And
so we find him presently back at Logan devoting his whole time to
the training of children's choruses and giving private lessons in
music.

These choruses attracted the attention of some Salt Lake
people during the quarterly conferences, and so it was not long
before Evan Stephens was induced to come to the city. Partly he
came to study, but partly he came to take up his work among
the children. He met with instant success. Two hundred chil-
dren came under his training. He had besides a glee club, which
afterwards became a choral society, A couple of concerts in the
theatre had such an effect as to bring him immediately two hundred
more children for his chorus. He was now in his twenty-eighth
year. A concert in the tabernacle sent his name through "Mor-
mondom." New demands came thick and fast. Ogden wanted
him one day a week. He accepted and trained five hundred child-
ren there. Springville wanted him, and he had another giant
class in that place. The University of Utah wanted him. At this
request, however, he balked. "My language is too poor, I make too
many mistakes in grammar," he said modestly to Dr. Park, when he
got his breath. The Doctor had been an attentive listener at his
training classes in the old Council House. "I don't want you for

274 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

grammar," explained the president, "1 want you to teach music."
And he accepted.

Of Evan Stephens' successes after that I need not speak. They
are too well known to require it. He has been an uplifting influ-
ence in our music. He has trained some of our best singers. He
has done more than any other person to raise the tone of our
musical numbers from "Jerusalem, my Glorious Home," and
"Hard Times, Come Again no More," to classics. He has in-
creased our tabernacle choir from seventy-five members to five
hundred odd. A glance at the musical programs given by Evan
Stephens during the last twenty-five years reveals the immense
range of the numbers. There is nothing small about Stephens,
except his stature. The sweep of his musical range is tremendous,
including the best of the past as well as the best of the present and
the significant music of all nations. He has had the signal credit —
for it is one — to be singing selections from new men at a time when
they were decried in the East, and then to see those men come into
high prominence and musical favor — which speaks well for his judg-
ment and independence.

And he has done everything on a large scale. He believes
in centralization, rather than individualism. Of course, he believes
in ward choirs, choral societies, and so on, but he believes that
in any town where there are several wards and much music there
ought to be a union of singers into one central body, and for these
reasons: first, only large bodies can produce the massive effects in
music, can sing the big things. "You may pile up rocks and
earth here to make the heap look like a mountain," is the way he
puts it, "but it does not lift the soul like the Wasatch." And
then it provides a center for the musical interest. In music, as in
everything else, union gives strength and power.

Evan Stephens is the true type of the musical man in the
Church. His music breathes the spirit and genius of "Mormonism."
It is distinctly "Mormon." This is seen in his ideas about what
a "Mormon" musician ought to be. First, he should tingle to his
finger tips with a passion for music. He should be saturated with
music, without losing the spirit of the gospel. Then he should
have an intense love for the community — have a desire to give to
them the best he can gather. He ought to be endowed abundantly

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 275

"with that all-pervading love to control him so that he will desire
to get only in order to give out again — to want all merely to
impart."

He, therefore, has not much patience with the craving in young
musical persons hereabouts for hurrying off to Boston or New York,
London or Germany or Paris. In the first place, he thinks that rush-
ing off to places where you spend fifteen to twenty-five hundred dol-
lars a year of borrowed money impairs your sense of obligation, crush-
es to a considerable extent those finer sensibilities so indispensable
in music. And in the next place going away to study for individual
work disqualifies most persons for usefulness to anyone but them-
selves. The tendency in the world is the very opposite of
what it must necessarily be among the Saints. The measure of a
musician in "Mormondom" is the amount of good he is doing, and
can do, in the community, in the world, the height he attains in
his selfishly individual work.

These are high ideas, and amply justify the title we have
given Evan Stephens, the Great Commoner in Music.

Salt Lake City, Utah.

The seals in Bering sea will form a subject for Congressional dis-
cussion and action this winter. In April of this year the contract made
in 1890, to last for 20 years between the government and the North
American Commercial company, will expire. This contract provided that
the company should have a monopoly of seal killing on the Pribilof
islands, for which it agreed to pay the government about $10 for
each skin. The company agreed to kill only young male seals, and only
on land. The company hires natives to do the killing at 75 cents a skin;
these skins are sold in London for $30 each. When our country pur-
chased Alaska, and the islands along with it, the seal herd numbered mil-
lions: now the number is estimated at 150,000. It seems impossible for
the government to control the sealing industry, as the seals remain on
Pribilof islands only for the breeding season. On going and coming from
the islands, Japanese and Canadian "poachers" intercept the seals,
killing both male and female, and so the herd is in danger of extinction.
The government is trying to avoid international trouble, and to get the
powers to aid in protecting the herd when feeding at sea.

Editor's Table.

The Love of Mother.

The Granite stake of Zion has set aside Tuesday evening of
each week for a "Home Evening." Every family in the stake is
asked to be at home, and the time is to be spent for the use and
benefit of the home. The parents are to teach their children the
gospel, there are to be songs, hymns, music, scripture readings,
instructions, games, refreshments and counsel — a getting nearer
together, in the family circle. The movement was 'started by a
large meeting of parents in the stake tabernacle recently. At
this meeting President Joseph F. Smith delivered a stirring ser-
mon on "Family Government," and from his remarks on this occa-
sion are selected these beautiful and instructive sentiments on
"The Love of Mother:"

I learned in my childhood, as most children, probably, have
learned, more or less at least, that no love in all the world
can equal the love of a true mother.

I did not think in those days and still I am at a loss to know
how it would be possible for anyone to love her children more
truly than did my mother. I have felt sometimes how could
even the Father love his children more than my mother loved her
children? It was life to me; it was strength; it was encourage-
ment; it was love that begot love or likeness in myself. I knew
she loved me with all her heart. She loved her children with all
her soul. She would toil and labor and sacrifice herself day and
night, for the temporal comforts and blessings that she could
meagerly give, through the results of her own labors, to her
children. There was no sacrifice of self — of her own time, of her
leisure, or pleasure, or opportunities for rest — that was considered
for a moment, when it came in comparison with her duty and her
love to her children.

EDITOR'S TABLE. 277

When I was fifteen years of age, and called to go to a
foreign country to preach the gospel — or to learn how, and to
learn it for myself — the strongest anchor that was fixed in my life ,
and that helped to hold my ambition and my desire steady, to bring
me upon a level and keep me straight, was that love which I knew
she had for me, who bore me into the world.

Only a little boy, not matured at all in judgment, without
the advantage of education, thrown in the midst of the greatest
allurements and temptations that it was possible for any boy or any
man to be subjected to, — and yet, whenever those temptations
became most alluring and most tempting to me, the first thought
that rose in my soul was this: "Remember the love of your mother.
Remember how she strove for your welfare. Remember how wil-
ing she was to sacrifice her life for your good. Remember what she
taught you in your childhood, and how she insisted upon your read-
ing the New Testament — the only book, except a few little school
books, that we had in the family, or that was within reach of us at
that time. This feeling toward my mother became a defense, a
barrier between me and temptation, so that I could turn aside from
temptation and sin by the help of the Lord and the love begotten in
my soul, toward her whom I knew loved me more than anybody else
in all the world, and more than any other living being could love me.

A wife may love her husband, but it is different to that of the
love of mother to her child. The true mother, the mother who
has the fear of God and the love of truth in her soul, would never
hide from danger or evil and leave her child exposed to it. But as
natural as it is for the sparks to fly upward, as natural as it is to
breathe the breath of life, if there were danger coming to her child,
t he would step between the child and that danger; she would
defend her child to the uttermost. Her life would be nothing in
the balance, in comparison with the life of her child. That is the
love of true motherhood — for children.

Her love for her husband would be different, for if danger
should come to him, as natural as it would be for her to
step between her child and danger, instead her disposition would
be to step behind her husband for protection; and that is the differ-
ence between the love of mother for children and the love of wife
for husband — there is a great difference between the two.

278 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

I have learned to place a high estimate upon the love of
mother. I have often said, and will repeat it, that the love of a
true mother comes nearer being like the love of God than any
other kind of love. The father may love his children, too; and
next to the love that the mother feels for her child, unquestion-
ably and rightfully, too, comes the love that the father feels for
his child. But, as it has been illustrated here by Brother Ander-
son, the love of the father is of a different character, or degree,
to the love of the mother for her child: illustrated by the fact he
related here of having the privilege of working with his boy,
having him in his presence, becoming more intimate with him,
learning his characteristics more clearly; becoming more familiar
and more closely related to him; the result of which was that his
love for his boy increased, and the love of the boy increased for
his father, for the same reason, merely because of that closer
association. So the child learns to love its mother best, as a rule,
when the mother is good, wise, prudent, and intelligent, because
the child is with her more, they are more familiar with each other
and understand each other better.

Now, this is the thought that I desire to express: Fathers, if
you wish your children to be taught in the principles of the gospel,
if you wish them to love the truth and understand it, if you wish
them to be obedient to and united with you, love them! and prove
to them that you do love them, by your every word or act to them.
For your own sake, for the love that should exist between you and
your boys— however wayward they might be, or one or the other
might be, when you speak or talk to them, do it not in anger; do
it not harshly, in a condemning spirit. Speak to them kindly: get
down and weep with them, if necessary, and get them to shed
tears with you if possible. Soften their hearts; get them to feel
tenderly towards you. Use no lash and no violence, but argue, or
rather reason — approach them with reason, with persuasion and
love unfeigned. With these means, if you cannot gain your boys
and your girls, they will prove to be reprobate to you; and there
will be no means left in the world by which you can win them to
yourselves. But, get them to feel as you feel, have interest in the
things in which you take interest, to love the gospel as you love
it, to love one another as you love them; to love their parents as

EDITOR'S TABLE. 279

the parents love the children. You can't do it any other way.
You can't do it by unkindness; you cannot do it by driving — our
children are like we are: we couldn't be driven; we can't be driven
now. We are like some other animals that we know of in the
world: You can coax them; you can lead them, by holding out in-
ducements to them and by speaking kindly to them, but you can't
drive them; they won't be driven. We won't be driven. Men
are not in the habit of being driven; they are not made that way.
That is not the way that God intended, in the beginning, to
deal with his children— by force. It is all free love, free grace.
The poet expressed it in these words:

"Know this that every soul is free,
To choose his course and what he'll be;
For this eternal truth is given,
That God will force no man to heaven."

You can't force your boys, nor your girls into heaven. You
may force them to hell — by using harsh means in the efforts to
make them good, when you yourselves are not as good as you
should be. The man that will be angry at his boy, and try to cor-
rect him while he is in anger, is in the greatest fault; he is more
to be pitied and more to be condemned than the child who has done
wrong. You can only correct your children in love, in kindness —
by love unfeigned, by persuasion and reason.

When I was a child, sometimes a wayward, disobedient little
boy — not that I was wilfully disobedient, but I would forget what
I ought to do; I would go off with playful boys and be absent when
I should have been at home, and I would forget to do things I was
asked to do. Then I would go home, feel guilty, know that I was
guilty, that I had neglected my duty and that I deserved punishment.

On one occasion I had done something that was not just right,
and my mother said to me: "Now, Joseph, if you do that again I shall
have to whip you." Well, time went on, and by and by I forgot
it, and I did something similar again; and this is the one thing
that I admired more, perhaps, than any secondary thing in her;
it was that when she made a promise she kept it. She never made
a promise, that I know of, that she did not keep.

Well, I was called to account. She said: "Now, I told you.
You knew that if you did this I would have to whip you, for I said

280 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

I would. I must do it. I do not want to do it. It hurts me worse
than it does you, but I must whip you."

Well, she had a little rawhide, already there, and while she
was talking or reasoning with me, showing me how much I de-
served it and how painful it was to her to inflict the punishment I
deserved — I had only one thought and that was: "For goodness
sake, whip me; do not reason with me;" for I felt the lash of her
just criticism and admonition a thousand fold worse than I did the
switch. I felt as if, when she laid the lash on me, I had at least
partly paid my debt and had answered for my wrong doing. Her
reasoning cut me down into the quick; it made me feel sorry to the
very core.

I could have endured a hundred lashes with the rawhide bet-
ter than I could endure a ten minutes talk in which I felt and was
made to feel that the punishment inflicted upon me was painful to
her that I loved — punishment upon my own mother!

(During the time the President was relating these incidents,
he spoke with great feeling, and at this point was obliged to stop
his discourse for a time, to calm his feelings; then he continued:)

You must excuse me. There are two divine personages that
I can scarcely think or talk about without it softens my spirit and
brings me down to the similitude of a little child; and those two
beings are my mother and my Redeemer! My Redeemer, the
Savior of my soul, my Redeemer from sin — Jesus of Nazareth, the
Son of the living God, he who restored the fulness of his gospel
and the plan of life and salvation, through the Prophet Joseph
Smith, in the dispensation in which we live. I cannot read the
New Testament about the Lord but it softens my soul. When I
think of him and of the humiliation that he passed through, the
death that he suffered for the redemption of man, I am captured
and captivated, and I can't help myself. I thank the Lord that
this is so.

If Thy Brother Offend Thee.

You are reconciled to your brother? You have done well. For
much difficulty could be avoided if brethren would observe this law

EDITOR'S TABLE. 281

of the Lord. And by this means, too, the kindly and upbuilding
spirit of the community would be largely increased and spread
abroad.

In questions of public policy men may differ. In the debates
of political campaigns that precede and follow elections there is
often much ill temper displayed. Some brethren are so unwise as
to get over-excited, and work themselves up to believing that un-
less their policies prevail, ruin will corns upon land and people.
Those who think otherwise are sometimes abused, and called bad
names. They are even pictured in public prints in the vilest
terms. Men call each other liars, deceivers and reprobates, and
impugn each other's motives in every action. Enmities are thus
formed that last between brethren through life, and that mar the
success of their public services, and make their private lives un-
happy.

Others take umbrage at the actions of their brethren who are
in the public service, and without understanding their motives,
ignorantly condemn their policies. They often work themselves
up into a fever of excitement that would be as ridiculous and un-
praiseworthy in their own eyes as it is in the eyes of their breth-
ren, if they themselves would only approach and look at the sub-
ject from the viewpoint of justice and right.

A man has no right to unjustly condemn tha actions of his
brother, or to abuse him; and, if in the heat of excitement he
unwisely and foolishly shall say things that are evil, unjust, and that
traduce the character of his brother, he should be man enough
when he learns better, and finds that he has actually sinned against
his brother, to ask his brother's forgiveness. He should go in
humility, recognizing the requirements of the law of reconciliation
which the Lord has revealed to his people, and ask the pardon and
forgiveness of his offended brother. He sins grievously in the
sight of his Father in heaven as well as before the Saints in con-
tinuing to bear enmity and to cherish evil in his heart.

The simple law requires that, if thy brother offend thee, take
him between him and thee alone, and if he confess, thou shalt be
reconciled. If he confess not, thou shalt deliver him up to the
elders of the Church.

But one says, "I am right, and my brother should therefore

282 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

come to me." And the other, of course, declares he also is right,
and that his brother should come to him. Who shall begin the
reconciliation? Both; it is as much one's duty as the other's to
have the difficulty settled. Then, if they cannot adjust the differences
between themselves, they should agree to call the elders of the
Church, and never rest until the hour of reconciliation comes.

Any other course, and especially one that harbors continued
ill feelings without effort or desire towards reconciliation, is wrong
in the sight of the Lord. It is detrimental not only to the indi-
viduals concerned, in that it stifles the feelings of brotherhood that
should exist between members of the Church, but it is a hindrance
to the progress and growth of the Church, and a grievous stum-
bling block to its members.

In case the offending brethren cannot become reconciled to
each other, the officers of the Church should be called to aid, and
when an offender persists in slander, lies, and in vituperating his
brother or brethren, and refuses to listen to reason or to become
reconciled, he should be dealt with for his fellowship. The Church
should be freed from such as wilfully refuse to obey the law of the
Lord in these matters.

But, as prevention is better than cure, would it not be best,
by the exercise of a little forethought, to forestall the evil by not
flying into a passion at the least provocation; and to seriously con-
sider the fact that there are few if any reasons that are of inter-
est and value enough to warrant the setting of friends and brethren
at enmity? And political differences figure as the most insignificant
of these.

Let every man seek to hold his temper in subjection to rea-
son and justice, and before he passes judgment upon his brother
weigh carefully the facts. If then it is necessary to pass re-
strictions or utter contrary views, let that be done in reason,
calmly, with deliberate judgment, and with a desire for the best
good of all concerned. If your views are not finally adopted, it is
neither sensible nor right to abuse and slander brethren who
differ from you in matters of public policy. He who persists in it
after due warning should answer for his folly before the elders of
the Church. Joseph F. Smith.

Messages from the Missions.

The Ministers Association of Laconia, New Hampshire, early in
October, printed an open letter in the Laconia Democrat warning the
community against "Mormon" workers "whose system of religious faith
is founded on the Book of Mormon and revelations." They regard the
success of these missionaries as detrimental to the best interests of the
community, and have no faith in their claims to "receive directions and
policies supernaturally." They complain also that the "Mormon" insti-
tution was long in rebellion against the United States, and warn those
who have patriotic love for their country, and who hold dear the church
and the home, as the ministers enjoy them in their enlightened section,
to have no interest in, nor to extend nor increase the power and influence
of, this religious system. "For," they say, "any success that may
attend the efforts of these representatives in the 'Mormon' Church
means so much a detriment to our dearest domestic and religious institu-
tions," and they close with the wish that "the sooner they depart from
our midst, the better it will be for all our people." This open letter was
printed on the 15th of October, in the Democrat, and on the 29th of
October, President Ben E. Rich wrote a reply which the Laconia
Democrat cheerfully gave space to. President Rich asks whether the
ministers drew their inspiration from that part of ancient history which
refers to the fashionable high priests of Jerusalem, who he thinks, no
doubt, passed similar resolutions against the Church of Jesus Christ of
Former-day Saints. He calls attention to the fact that he is a descend-
ant, both on the part of father and mother, of Revolutionary soldiers,
and that a part of their work consisted in having one government upon
the earth that would not be controlled by bigoted ministers, but would
be a land of religious liberty; and then he says:

"If I want to believe that the gospel taught by Christ and his apos-
tles was to be an everlasting gospel, that is none of your business. If
you want to believe that it was an everlastingly changeable gospel, that
is none of my business. If I want to believe the doctrine of 'one Lord,
one faith, and one baptism,' as taught by Paul, that is none of your
business; if you want to believe in a gospel made up of different kinds of
faiths and different kinds of baptisms, that is none of my business. I
enclose you our Articles of Faith. If you do not like them, you do not
have to accept them. If I do not like yours, I do not have to accept
them. But how thankful all men should be that such men as you are
not running the government of the United -States. We would have a
return of the old-fashioned fireworks which surrounded the stakes in the
days of witchery, when one man's life was in danger if he believed a little

284 IMPRO VEMENT ERA .

different than some other man. God bless the United States of America
and protect it from bigotry."

On the 3rd of November the News and Critic took up the discussion
and suggested that before the "Mormons1' are given full blast, there
ought to be a commission chosen to look into their articles of faith and
to decide if it is safe and sensible. The article closes in this fashion:
"If these Mormons are going around telling the easily worked that
they will have 'to take 'ours' or hell awaits, they might get a whole lot
of people who could be just as well accommodated by the religious insti-
tutions we have with us." In the reply to the News and Critic, which, by
the by, the paper returned unprinted, President Rich wrote in part:

"I am afraid you are going to have a hard job in gathering together
a suitable committee out of this babel of religious and irreligious con-
fusion. Furthermore, Mr. Critic, how do you think the Methodists,
Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, or others doing missionary work
among the 'Mormons' would like to have their religion investigated
before a 'Mormon' committee to see whether it would be suitable for the
people or not? Don't you think it would be just as reasonable for the
'Mormons' to make this demand? This brings us back to your original
recommendation, that a 'consolidation rather than an increase of
churches, is really necessary. I will recommend that our united prayer
be for a return of primitive Christianity, with all its ancient gifts, bless-
ings and promises. I am willing to appear before your committee with
such a gospel just as soon as your committee is ready to receive me.
Please let me know when the just and impartial committee— unbiased,
and not tinctured with prejudice — will be ready to receive me, and I will
be on hand to present my claims that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been
restored to the earth in fulfilment of prophecy, that its mission aims to
consolidate all churches into primitive Christianity, bringing men to a
knowledge of God and giving them a testimony for themselves that the
work we represent is true. Yours very truly."

Elder T. L. Hatch writes from Cork, Ireland, November 27, 1909,
making a correction which we cheerfully print:

"In connection with the the article, 'The South of Ireland, 'in the Novem-
ber number of the Era, you incorrectly gave me the honor of being president
of the Irish conference.' At the time I wrote, Elder T. J. Bennett wi.s pre-
siding over the work in Ireland, (see names and explanations accom-
panying pictures of 'Irish farm house,' also second picture of 'Blarney
Castle, ' where I mention Elder Bennett as 'president of the Irish con-
ference.' Elder Bennett has now been released, and is on his way
home. Elder William W. Osborn is now presiding over the Irish
conference. .1 have no desire to be given the honor which belongs to my
esteemed brethren, Elders Bennett and Osborn. I beg to remain, yours
faithfully, T. L. Hatch."

Priesthood Quorums' Table.

Priesthood Quorums Studies.— In reply to a number of questions,
the Committee on Priesthood Quorums Study announce that the following
subjects will be taken up for the year 1910: Seventies, "The Doctrine of
Deity;'' High Priests, "History of the Gospel:" Elders, "Duties and
Principles from the Doctrine and Covenants and Modern Revelation;1'
Priests, "Divine Mission of the Savior;" Teachers, "Life of Christ;''
Deacons, "Book of Mormon." The manuals, it is believed, will be ready
early in January for distribution. They were placed in the hands
of the printers December 15, and orders may be sent now to the
Improvement Era, 20-22 Bishop's Building, Salt Lake City, and will re-
ceive prompt attention and as soon as outlines are ready, in the order in
which received.

Meetings of Seventies at each Stake Conference. — The First
Council feel constrained to offer the following items of instruction, to the
local councils of the various quorums of Seventy:

The work of the Lord is constantly expanding, and necessarily de-
mands more and more of the time of the presiding authorities, to regu-
late, and set in order its various departments. In order to meet the re-
quirements made upon them, the leading brethren are compelled to crowd
their many labors into as small a period of time as is consistent with the
importance of the various matters that come under their jurisdiction.
There are sixty organized stakes in Zion, each holding four stake confer-
ences yearly, making two hundred and forty conferences every year.
When the weeks are eliminated during which the general conferences of
the Church are held, and during which some of the most general, and im-
portant holdings occur, every other week throughout the year has some
six stake conference appointments, nearly all of which the Council of the
Twelve undertake to atttend. This great demand made upon the time of
the Twelve, in addition to their many other important labors, has made
it necessary for them to call upon the First Council of Seventy to assist
them in attending stake conferences.

The First Council has been instructed to refrain as much as is con-
sistent with the welfare of the quorums of Seventy, from making appoint-
ments with the quorums, that would prevent them from responding to the
calls that are made upon them by the Twelve, to attend stake confer-
ences.

There are one hundred and fifty-six quorums of Seventy in the Church
at the present time; very little thought is necessary on the part of those

286 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

who have the management of the various quorums in hand, to make plain
to them the utter impossibility of the First Council making special visits
to each quorum, every time that changes occur and attention becomes
necessary. The work required can be accomplished, if the presidents of
quorums of Seventy in each stake will be on the alert to bring all essen-
tial business before the members of the First Council as they visit the
stakes in attendance upon quartery conferences.

The councils of quorums throughout the Church are urged to give
careful attention to the needs of the quorums, and always be ready to
aid the First Council in the accomplishment of the work that is required
of them. If local councils will be prepared to bring to the attention of
visiting members of the First Council, matters that affect the welfare of
the quorums, much good work can be performed in the interest of the
Seventies, during the time of holding stake conferences.

Whenever there is business of more than ordinary importance to be
attended to, such as increasing the membership of a quorum by ordaining
new members, installing new presidents, etc., the First Council should
be notified at least two weeks prior to the holding of the conference at
which such matters are to receive attention. The giving of a timely
notice will enable the presiding council to make such appointments as
will insure attention to all important matters, expedite business, and
avoid disappointments.

Presidents of quorums are expected to have all the members under-
stand that a meeting of the seventies will be held in connection with each
stake conference. Every seventy should be made to feel the necessity
of attending these special meetings, also the advantage and blessing of
being present at all stake conferences.

Special appointments will be made in the interest of the quorums of
Seventy as often as circumstances will permit, or the necessities of the
quorums may demand. In addition to these appointments, much work
must be attended to during the time of holding the various conferences,
in order to keep the quorums in good working condition.

"Wherefore now let every man learn his duty, and to act in the
office to which he is appointed, in all diligence.

"He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he
that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved, shall not be
counted worthy to stand."

The New Course of Study.— The Committee on Course of Study
make the following statements and suggestions in the Preface of the
Outlines for 1910, in which class teachers as well as members will be
deeply interested:

"In sending out the second series of outlines for the quorums of

PRIESTHOOD QUORUMS' TABLE. 287

the Priesthood, we desire to express gratification' at the impetus the
Priesthood movement took upon itself last year. It was not only a step
towards the destined prominence of the quorums in the Church — it was a
bound.

"Expressions of appreciation of the interest manifested in Priest-
hood meetings came from every stake, and the increased activity
among individuals and quorums is indeed commendable.

"But favorable as the general improvement was, after all, it was
only a beginning, and inconveniences and difficulties were met that
tended to slacken interest and retard progress. One of these was the
length of the lessons. The purpose of Part Two in the course last
year was not accomplished. Many spent so much time of the class reci-
tation considering Part One that no opportunity was left to give suffi-
cient thought to the assignment of duties. Others failed to consider at all
the practical suggestions in Part Two.

"In these lessons, greater care has heen taken to emphasize a
thought in each lesson that will be applicable to the members of the
class, and the presidents of quorums and class instructors are urged to
make the application. Some suggestions appear at the end of every les-
son, but they are, of course, only suggestive; and it is expected that
quorums everywhere will introduce into their daily lives the suggestions
and truths developed in these courses of study.

" 'To him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.'
'Not every one that sayeth Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

"Give all members something to do every week. Let them work;
have them work; help them work.

"Another difficulty was met in keeping up the attendance and inter-
est during the summer months. Some of the stakes succeeded in carry-
ing out the course just as it was recommended one year ago, and some of
the wards did excellent work, even during the busiest season of the year.
But many adjourned, some for one reason, and some for another. Now
there are thirty-six lessons this year, as there were last ; and it is again
suggested that those who continue for twelve months take up three les-
sons each month, one day each month being occupied with special instruc-
tions to ward teachers and other matters arranged by the local and stake
officers. Others who feel that they are compelled to adjourn, must
arrange as best they can to complete the course of thirty-six lessons,
and have their local monthly priesthood meetings as well.

"Perhaps the greatest difficulty in the way of success was the lack of
preparation on the part of class instructors. None-preparation is inex-
cusable. Wilful non-preparation is sinful. To aid president and teacher
in the preparing of their lessons, each quorum should receive help from

288

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

stake authorities specially appointed to give instructions to the represen-
tatives of the various quorums and classes in the stake priesthood meet-
ing. After the general instructions from the stake presidency and high
council are given, quorums could adjourn to different rooms or parts in
the same room, and there receive suggestions on lessons and duties for
the next month.

"Now, hrethren, may the Lord bless you with the spirit of this great
work! May every man feel a desire to do his part in making the quo-
rums of Priesthood in very deed the power of the Church, the strength of
Zion. Let the movement so well begun last year be accelerated in this,
and so continue until the purposes of the Almighty are accomplished.''

The General Committee.

ELDERS OF THE SOUTH TEXAS CONFERENCE.

Left to right: Niels Christiansen, J. C. Qualman, G. M. Smith, J.
F. Mitchell, W. A. Lougy, J. S. Martin. Middle row: W. A. Bishop,
J. D. Pratt, S.O. Bennion, (Mission President) ; M. F. Hixson (Conference
President); P. D. McArthur. Bottom row: W. B. Stoddard, M. A, Niel-
son. R. W. Seaman, A. H. West.

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